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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.

For any entrepreneur in college, E-Tower is a dream. The community of 21 entrepreneurs at Babson College share living quarters and centralized office resources of a traditional business hatchery to grow and build their businesses while in school. Businesses range from those in the product development stage to multimillion dollar companies. The tower was actually the first of its kind started by students in 2001 and still run by students today. But, it’s not quite an incubator since startups don’t receive any seed capital from the school.

The organization has meetings every Monday night where members pitch and brainstorm business ideas as well as speak series that bring in top CEO’s and entrepreneurs from around the country. I have been to one of the meetings, and have to say that it’s a pretty cool opportunity. Here is a video that gives you a better idea of what it’s like:

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…)

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]

A group of dedicated undergraduate and graduate MIT students recently unveiled their 1976 all-electric, once gas powered Porsche, which now operates on 18 high-tech batteries. This type of a conversion is quite an extraordinary achievement, which they are now using as a platform experiment with new ways of increasing efficiency and performance by monitoring variables while driving.

Usually, electric vehicles operate on conventional lead-acid batteries, but this Porsche has been fortunate to get a hold on some lithium phosphate rechargeable ones that are valued at over $2,000 each, thanks to Valence Technology, Inc., who donated. According to a modeling program, the Porsche could reach speeds of up to 100 miles an hour with a 130 miles range. However, tests have thus far been limited to an MIT parking lot, so we won’t know for a while. The project was only formalized last fall and is officially known as the MIT Electric Vehicle Team.

For obvious reasons, electric cars will rise in demand as oil prices squeeze our wallets. According to an MIT article, “Many auto manufacturers are displaying a growing interest in EVs.” The team will clearly be well positioned and possibly even be able to start their own company off of the technologies they are creating in their labs. The same article explains some of benefits of EVs and what they will have in store for the future:

Team members are all big supporters of EVs, quick to enthuse about their technological advantages and market potential. For example, in place of the usual massive internal combustion engine, an EV has a flexible electric motor that has better torque characteristics and can with a flip of a switch go backwards, putting the car into reverse, no transmission needed. Fewer moving parts means less maintenance, lower costs, and less waste. Batteries—now the critical enabler—are constantly improving, and while the driving range is still limited, EVs can go far enough to meet a surprisingly large fraction of our needs. (One doesn’t need a truck that seats five and can tow a boat to go to the supermarket, noted Wildman.)

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…)

The Campus Word is a multimedia platform that provides its own journalistic content, while also enabling its users to share their favorite web content with the help of a user profile. Still in alpha, the site currently has fifteen student writers contributing content from campuses around the country. Blogs range from self help advice, to relationship advice, to political and sports op-eds. The site’s layout is pretty easy to understand, as it separates and organizes media for the user, producing content uploaded by The Campus Word writers or users first and then linking it to other college media sites and blogs on the web.

But co-founders and Hamilton ‘07 alums Greg Rogan, Chase Garbarino, and Kevin McCarthy have bigger plans than the traditional online publication platform. “We are currently developing a platform for students to easily find and share all of their favorite content from around the web and develop new connections with people across the country interested in the same types of content to optimize their experience” said Chase Garbarino. Currently, the student blogging feature is available for all users, as is the site’s video content. Chase expects these two features to be expanded and others to be released when the site becomes fully operational at the end of the summer.

One of the more progressive features of the website is its cooperation with student-run organizations to generate ad-based revenue. By linking its users to student organizations striving to “spread the word” about particular issues, The Campus Word is simultaneously allowing its users to network with affiliates and elevating them as authorities in their particular field. So long as the number of visitors continues to rise–as it has since January–The Campus Word can expect a significant user base come summer, as well as revenue generated from its unique advertising model.