My Weblog

With lots of you graduating, your parents are presumably looking for gifts to commemorate this joyous occasion. For the environmentally responsible parents WorldChanging is offering a very unique gift. The organization will wipe your carbon slate clean. Depending on the level of donation, they’ll remove all the guilt of the carbon emissions you caused in your childhood, college or working life.

From the website of WorldChanging,

Your grad gets to head out into the world with the moral weight of their personal choices lifted from their shoulders, you get to show your love and respect, the climate gets a bit of a break and Worldchanging gets the funds we need to continue our prize-winning work exploring the solutions that will create real, lasting change. Half your gift is even tax-deductible!

The amount of money you donate will be used to buy carbon offsets from TerraPass. For $6,000, they’ll offset all the climate emissions you racked up until high school graduation. For $7,500, they’ll offset childhood and university years. For $25,000, they’ll offset youth, college and working careers.

In addition, you’ll also get a certificate saying that you’re carbon slate is clean. Yes, this means there is a way to pay back for all the emissions you’ve caused and be good again. Living a carbon neutral life is trendy and it is certainly easier to pay for your deeds than change your bulb or get an electric car. Last year individuals spent $331 million to buy carbon offsets for (more…)

SCORE, which is a non-profit aiming to educate entrepreneurs and small business owners, recently launched a new section with resources for young entrepreneurs.

Visitors to the site will find the following resources:

• Insights for Young Entrepreneurs features key articles on: entrepreneurship as a career choice; Web site design; university assistance; and how to start smart.
• Resources for Young Entrepreneurs lists more than 35 organizations, groups and Web sites that offer news, strategies and assistance.
• Competitions for Young Entrepreneurs features eight awards that help encourage and recognize business success.
• Stats on Young Entrepreneurs provides the latest research and facts on Generation X and Generation Y entrepreneurship.
• How SCORE Can Help You highlights SCORE’s free online and face-to-face counseling, low-cost workshops and free eNewsletters.

SCORE is headquartered in Herndon, VA and Washington, DC and has 389 chapters throughout the United States and its territories, with 10,500 volunteers nationwide. Both working and retired executives and business owners donate time and expertise as business counselors. SCORE was founded in 1964.

In a world tinted with nuance, Solidarity Project is refreshingly straightforward. The Solidarity Project began days after the Virginia Tech tragedy as a way to remember the 32 victims killed that day. The goal of the Solidarity Project was to establish a $10,000 scholarship in the name of each of the 32 victims, along with a $10,000 scholarship for mental health research. By selling shirts $10 at a time, Solidarity Project has exceeded their goals to condemn violence on campus, promote education, and build a national body of charity inclined-college students. Each shirt is a living memory of the tragedy and an attempt to prevent future tragedies.

Solidarity Project was founded by Sarah Khasawinah, a junior and student body president at Bryn Mawr college near Philadelphia. Joining Sarah in the venture are Bryn Mawr classmates Suzanne Ali, Nafisa Misawa, Dorrie Tang, Tara Malone and  Nashmia Khalid. After Virgina Tech announced their intention to create a $100,000 scholarship to honor each of the victims of the massacre, Khasawinah decided that the money she raised from Solidarity Project t-shirt sales should go towards that effort. The idea quickly expanded to garner support from all 139 colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. (more…)

Tin-Yun Ho, now a Harvard (’07) graduate, developed the idea for Beyond Orders in 2005 after reading an article online about an officer stationed in Iraq who had asked her friends and family back home to collect school supplies for local Iraqi children. The story prompted Ho to think about how he could help connect U.S. soldiers working in communities in Iraq with civilians back home eager to help with humanitarian efforts in Iraq.

The result of Ho and his co-founders’ work is BeyondOrders.org, which allows soldiers to post requests for items that will help improve the lives and communities of local Iraqis. Non-profit organizations and private civilians can then browse the site and send requested items, or make their own posts letting soldiers know what they are able to offer. At the moment, for example, many soldiers have requested basic school supplies, such as notebooks and pencils, which many Iraqi children lack. The site has already helped donors send over $40,000 worth of items, from sewing machines to soccer balls.

After his initial brainstorm, Ho spoke with Rajiv Srinivasan, a West Point cadet, and the two decided to launch the project. Soon, Matt Scherrer, a Harvard Business student and 2001 Princeton graduate who had served four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Army Ranger, and Kate Buzicky, a Harvard Law student and fellow Princeton ROTC graduate, were on board. (more…)

The Inter-American Development Bank has launched its grant program called Innovation for Inclusive Development. The grant is aimed at fostering development and dissemination of innovations in products, processes and services and engender solutions with the potential of improving the quality of life of poor and/or excluded people in Latin America and the Caribbean. Up to six grants, ranging from $30,000 to $100,000, will be awarded to the selected individuals to develop, test and pilot the projects in the region. Here is a link to selection criteria of award.

The deadline for submission of project proposals is June 20, 2008 (5pm EST). For more information visit the Innovation for Inclusive Development website.

YouthActionNet is a prestigious international fellowship program aimed at young social entrepreneurs between ages of 18 and 29. Every year they select 20 outstanding leaders and supports them through a year long program of leadership skills building. The previous fellows from the past 6 years have done extraordinary work in areas of social development, environmental policies and have influenced government decisions too. The fellowship is offered by the International Youth Federation

Last date for applications: May 15th, 2008.

Eligibility:

Young people in the age 18-29 years, who should be the founders of existing project/organisation with a clear vision for social change or leading a project within an organisation. Proficiency in English is required and the applications must be submitted in English

Program Benefits:

Skill-building:
1. A seven day capacity-building retreat in Washington, DC (all expenses paid)
2. Development of a customized learning plan based on individual leadership learning needs. This learning is focused on six dimensions of leadership: personal, visionary, political, collaborative, organizational, and societal.

Networking:
1. Networking with international and national aid agencies, NGOs, and corporate partners
2. Peer-to-peer networking throughout the year.

Advocacy:
1. Training in communications and media outreach; public relations technical assistance.
2. Access to global advocacy platforms and media coverage.

Global Fellows also have access to potential funding opportunities.

[YAN via Letmeknow]

The Babson College Micro Credit Investment Fund is a student managed micro credit investment group within Babson College. Student managers invest in promising entrepreneurs and organization leaders, providing them with the credit necessary to launch. J. Daniel Catalano, President of the fund, has indicated that the initial capital will be supplied by donors and returns will be reinvested in the fund.

The micro-lending fund will initially operate in Kiva, a 501c3 non-profit website that allows individuals to act as microlenders to entrepreneurs in developing nations, but eventually will explore other opportunities for micro credit lending in a more personal environment. The student managers will make collective decisions to optimize the portfolio and grow assets. Catalano told us that the long-term goals of the fund are to educate students on the principles and intricacies of micro lending while effectively alleviating the burden of poverty among ambitious third world entrepreneurs and their surrounding communities.

For those of you that have heard the term thrown around but aren’t quite sure what it means, micro crediting is the act of providing entrepreneurs will small loans quickly and without a pledge in order to support and facilitate commercial activities. The entrepreneurs will rarely have a formal business plan, but are typically provided a private consultant (prevents moral hazard and increases productivity) in addition to the borrowed money for free. The financing is interest-bearing, but only for the funds that are exhausted. The average repayment period through organizations such as Kiva is usually about four months.

Consumers are for the most part completely oblivious to the negative or positive social impact created by some of their most trusted companies. Were they to be informed, presumably a significant number of them would change their consumer behavior, especially in situations where no extra hassle would be introduced as a result. Citizens Market is a non-profit organization dedicated to informing the consumer. More specifically, the company promotes socially responsible choices in the marketplace by providing an online platform to share reliable information about the social and environmental performance of companies.

The team, comprised of recent college grads led by Executive Director Stéphane de Messières (MPP 2007, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University), is developing a user-generated database to gather reliable information on the social and environmental performance of companies. The database will be free, transparent and accessible online. Any volunteer can contribute information about companies’ performance in certain categories, such as labor practices, environmental impact or community development. For those concerned about the validity of information, all submissions are overseen by the community. Ratings and supporting reviews are filtered and weighted for reliability, as measured by peer reviews. The team monitors all of the inputs and then aggregates them into profiles and scores for each company in each social topic. Each company’s profile will be linked with its brands and products’ barcodes.

An interesting expansion goal for Citizens Market is their intention to partner with large firms such as Microsoft and Hewlett Packard to build a mobile service that will allow consumers to scan barcodes and retrieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) information on their phones. This will certainly increase the impact of their movement dramatically, enabling individuals on-the-go in seconds.

The mobile solution could be even more critical due to the fact that awareness on the web may not lead to action when consumers leave their computers and are faced with decisions. Currently, all of the information sits on the web and as the content grows it will become increasingly difficult to remember which brands are socially responsible. Nonetheless, Citizens Market is heading in the right direction. It seems that they have the vision and the management team necessary to make a real impact. The organization is seeking a grant of $212,000 for the first year of full operations and a total of $884,000 over five years.

“Change begins in thought. Thought must act to change.” The slogan of Students 4 Peace not only parallels the necessary mindset of an entrepreneur, but more generally that of an individual who understands a key element necessary to make an impact. The non-profit Boston based organization’s mission is certainly noteworthy and should be applauded as they aim to “improve our society and world by working together and reaching a cleaner, safer and more accepting global community.” Students 4 Peace aims to accomplish this by building a network of like-minded campus organizations across the country to unify and leverage efforts through cultural and social events, website and newsroom in order to promote peace, co-existence, environment and health issues and activism.

There are many students and groups at work on the campus level. As a network organization we seek to unite these individual student groups and create a community on the regional scale. Through the network and e-calendar, students learn about the other events and activists in the area. This will enable various organizations to invite each other and work together to create larger, more effective events that will consequently reach more students and make better use of resources.

Although the word “Peace” has political connotations, Yoni Vendriger, the Founder of S4P, stresses that the organization will focus on people-to-people interactions. (more…)

While it seems that almost every new web enterprise ends up being compared to YouTube one way or another, the analogy is too fitting to avoid in this case. SciVee is the YouTube for scientists. The site lets published scientists upload video presentations, or “Pubcasts,” to accompany and introduce their peer-reviewed articles, hopefully allowing them to reach a broader audience, attract more attention to their research, and invite discussion from their peers.

Anyone who wishes to do so can log on for free and watch scientists explain their research on topics like “Temporal Dynamics of European Bat Type I and Survival of Myotis Bats in Natural Colonies,” or “Homogenization of northern U.S. Great Lakes forests due to land use.” SciVee’s creators hope that in addition to facilitating communication within the academic community, these video presentations will also help to make the latest research accessible to those outside academia who are nonetheless interested in science.

SciVee is a slight departure from our usual subject matter in that it is the creation of a team of science professors, rather than students or young entrepreneurs. However, the site is clearly so intertwined with the college community that we couldn’t ignore it. SciVee was founded by Philip E. Bourne, a professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego, and Leo M. Chalupa, a professor of Ophthalmology and Neurobiology at UC Davis. The site operates with seed financing from the National Science Foundation, a federally funded agency dedicated to the promotion of science, and is partnered with the Public Library of Science, a non-profit organization, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which hosts the site. Thus, SciVee does not appear to be explicitly a money-making venture, although, as Bourne admits, stable, long-term funding will have to be secured in order to insure the longevity of the site.

After a quick review of some of the pubcasts on SciVee, one has to agree that there is a good deal of usefulness to a multimedia presentation on scientific research. There is certainly more information to be gained from watching a video than reading an abstract and because reading a full journal article can often be a time-consuming task, the videos may help scientists decide which research to read. In addition, the idea of using visual aids to make research more engaging has great potential to widen the appeal of science.

However, at this point, most of the content on SciVee, even with the visual aids is probably a little out of reach for most of those outside the scientific community (myself included). Many posters on SciVee could take some cues from some of the videos on sites like JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) to make their videos more visually engaging, rather than simply taping themselves talking about their research. However, in order to really appeal to the broader community, SciVee may have to expand beyond the model of pubcasting peer-reviewed articles. JoVE and DNATube, which broadcast visualized explanations of specific scientific concepts, take approaches which may appeal more to the non-professional but interested viewer.

Facilitating productive communication within the scientific community and making science more accessible to those outside that community are both admirable goals, but it might be tough to do both at once. However, it is certainly good to see the academic community embracing the Web 2.0 world, and SciVee should prove yet another useful tool for the dissemination of knowledge.