Newsletter - November 2008

Dear Social Entrepreneurs,

We wanted to share with you a number of exciting news on past and upcoming activities:

Last weekend, the inaugural Summit on the Global Agenda was held in Dubai (7-9 November 2008). 34 social entrepreneurs from the Schwab Foundation community participated in this “biggest ever brainstorming” on the world’s key challenges. The meeting gathered more than 700 top thought leaders from business, academia, government and civil society who convened in 68 different Councils to discuss the state of the world and suggested actions on a wide range of issues in the fields of economic development, environment, finance, geopolitics, health, technology, society and values.

The 34 social entrepreneurs participated in 16 different councils. To highlight just a few councils and the social entrepreneurs represented in them:

• Role of Sports in Society: Mel Young (Homeless World Cup)
• Empowering Youth: Jeroo Billimoria (Aflatoun) and Martin Burt (Fundación Paraguaya)
• Financial Empowerment: Vikram Akula (SKS Microfinance), Mary Houghton (Shorebank), Roshaneh Zafar (Kashf Foundation)
• Water scarcity: Joe Madiath (Gram Vikas), Jack Sim (World Toilet Organization)
• Alternative Energy: Harish Hande (SELCO), Nic Frances (CoolNRG), Rory Stear (Freeplay Energy), Ashok Khosla (Development Alternatives)
• Gender Gap: Ann Cotton (CAMFED) and Wu Qing (Rural Women)

One of the Councils focused on the key challenges of social entrepreneurship itself. The council members were a mix of social entrepreneurs and academics. José Ignacio Avalos (Gente Nueva), Vicky Colbert (Escuela Nueva), Andreas Heinecke (Dialogue in the Dark) and Garth Japhet (Heartlines) represented the practitioner’s side. Greg Dees, Johanna Meir, David Bornstein and Hiroshi Tasaka provided the academic insights into the discussion, which was superbly moderated by Rick Aubry (Rubicon). The Council concluded that the concept of social entrepreneurship has gained recognition.

In order to be more widely embraced by governments and businesses in particular, the key areas identified are the need to show metrics for the field as well as demonstrate that succes sful social innovations can truly be scaled. See Full Report.
You can also access the summaries from the 68 different councils.

The meeting was a great success. The format was highly interactive and provided the opportunity to really dive deep into the respective subjects. We hope to increase the number of social entrepreneurs on the Global Agenda Councils over the next year. Council membership is for a year and requires the active participation in 2-3 virtual meetings per year as well as the Dubai meeting.

The World Economic Forum on Europe and Central Asia took place in Istanbul from
30 October – 1 November. Nine social entrepreneurs from Europe and Helmy Abouleish from Egypt participated in the meeting. Michael Rawding, Vice President at Microsoft presented the Unlimited Potential Group, which develops sustainable software and technology solutions for low income groups, primarily in emerging markets and developing countries. We will provide an opportunity to explore the collaboration options with Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group at our upcoming regional meetings. During the opening plenary session, in the presence of the Turkish prime minister as well as three other heads of state, we highlighted the European “Social Entrepreneurs of the Year” 2008 in a Special Ceremony. These were:

• Marco Roveda, LifeGate, Italy
• Rose Volz-Schmidt, Wellcome, Germany
• Aynur Bektas, Hey Tekstil, Turkey
• Reed Paget, BeluWater, UK

Another World Economic Forum event, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, was held in Tianjin 27-28 September with the participation of several social entrepreneurs. A hands-on and interactive workshop entitled Rethinking the Base of the Pyramid allowed participants to creatively devise new products and services for low income groups. Read more.

Immediately upcoming is the India Economic Summit, taking place from 16-18 November in New Delhi. We are working together with the Consumer Industry and the Sustainability teams of the World Economic Forum to host a joint workshop on November 15, exploring patterns and designs for a more sustainable consumption in the future.  In the evening of November 15, the finalists and the winner of the Indian “Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008” award will be celebrated in a special gala event.

I know many of you are waiting for news around the Social Entrepreneurs’ Summit and the Annual Meeting in Davos. While we received overwhelming feedback from the Summit in Rüschlikon this year, we will not hold a global Summit before the Annual Meeting in 2009. Depending on your demand, we will look into the opportunity of holding a Social Entrepreneurs’ meeting later during the year 2009 or 2010. Having the meeting during another time of the year allows us to concentrate on maximizing the Davos experience and opportunities for social entrepreneurs. We continue to think that building the community is of utmost importance and therefore encourage you to participate in the regional events. We are enhancing the social entrepreneurship components of the regional events, including private meetings before the ev ents, site visits to social entrepreneurs, sessions in the official program on social entrepreneurship and award celebrations during a key plenary of the regional meeting. For your information, please access the latest dates for upcoming regional meetings.

The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos will start with a welcome reception on 27 January and run until 1 February 2009. We will have the opportunity to invite 30 social entrepreneurs this year. We are inviting those of you we can place in sessions in the official program and in the different private meetings that are being held by the industry groups and initiatives. We have already gone out with the first 10 invitations. The next wave of invitations will be sent by next week. About half of the sessions in Davos this year will look at the implications of the financial crisis, but we are also working on proposing sessions with a direct relevance to your fields of activity.

You might also have noticed that we have revamped our website. The centre piece of the website is the search function for social entrepreneurs and your profiles as this is the feature that we are most often asked for.

We will provide more news in periodic updates. In the meantime, we always look forward to hearing about your current projects, successes and challenges.

Warmest regards from
 
Mirjam Schöning
and the Schwab Foundation Team