A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in financial, social and environmental well-being—this may include maximizing social impact alongside profits for external shareholders. As a consumer, buying for a social enterprise is one of the most impactful methods of supporting positive social change and your community.
A restavek is a child in Haiti who is sent by his or her parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child. The term comes from the French language rester avec, "to stay with". Parents unable to care for children may send them to live with wealthier families, often their own relatives or friends. Often the children are from rural areas, and relatives who host restaveks live in more urban settings. The expectation is that the children will be given food and housing in exchange for doing housework. However, many restaveks live in poverty, may not receive proper education, and are at grave risk for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
Social entrepreneurship is the use of start-up companies and other entrepreneurs to develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations with different sizes, aims, and beliefs. For-profit entrepreneurs typically measure performance using business metrics like profit, revenues and increases in stock prices, but social entrepreneurs are either non-profits or blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to society" and therefore must use different metrics. Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development.
Acción Emprendedora (AE) is a non-profit organization founded 2002 in Chile. The organization seeks to eradicate poverty by training and assisting poor small business owners and helping microentrepreneurs grow their businesses through education and mediating loan negotiations. Based in Santiago de Chile, it is present in seven major cities throughout Chile.
Susan Davis is an author, public speaker, consultant and expert in international development and social entrepreneurship. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University Stern School of Business and senior Advisor and coach to New York University's program on social entrepreneurship and active on many boards and advisory councils.
Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is often initially a small business. The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs.
Sustainopreneurship is a concept that has emerged from the earlier concepts social entrepreneurship and ecopreneurship, via sustainability entrepreneurship. The concept means to use creative business organizing to solve problems related to sustainability to create social and environmental sustainability as a strategic objective and purpose, at the same time respecting the boundaries set in order to maintain the life support systems in the process. In other words, it is a "business with a cause" – where the world problems are turned into business opportunities by deployment of sustainability innovations.
A social venture is an undertaking by a firm or organization established by a social entrepreneur that seeks to provide systemic solutions to achieve a sustainable, social objective.
Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur was the Empress of Haiti (1804–1806) as the spouse of Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Blake Mycoskie is an American entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Toms Shoes.
Benjamin K. Sovacool is director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Technology and Development and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. He is also professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex, where he directs both the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand, one of six End Use Energy Demand Centres in the United Kingdom, and the Sussex Energy Group. His research interests include energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy. He is the author or editor of eighteen books and 300 peer-reviewed academic articles and chapters and has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sovacool is editor-in-chief of Energy Research & Social Science, which explores the interactions between energy systems and society.
The Institute for Business and Professional Ethics is a business ethics research and development center within the College of Commerce at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1985 in a joint effort between DePaul University's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and College of Commerce to create a forum for ethical deliberation in professional decision-making processes. The Institute is one of 45 specialized centers and institutes at DePaul that support student learning with an institutional commitment to community service and social justice. The IBPE publishes case studies, books, and journal articles in business ethics, and hosts a series of annual business workshops and conferences. It is also the editorial home of the Business and Professional Ethics Journal.
The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is an international network of organizations that works to promote entrepreneurship in developing countries. Services and programming efforts focus on providing financial support for small and growing businesses and entrepreneurs whose organizations are too large for microfinance loans and too small for traditional bank loans. The organization was launched in January 2009, as the public policy initiative of the Aspen Institute.
Laila Rashed Iskander Kamel is an Egyptian social entrepreneur and politician. She is currently Egypt's Minister of State for Environment Affairs in the newly formed interim government under Prime Minister Hazem El Beblawi.
Poverty in Haiti affects its people in many aspects of everyday life, including housing, nutrition, education, healthcare, infant mortality rates, as well as environment. Haiti has constantly been plagued with low levels of living conditions, with many Haitians moving into the capital city of Port-au-Prince in a bid to escape poverty in the more rural areas of the country. Levels of poverty in Haiti are generally regarded as among the most severe in the western hemisphere.
An entrepreneurial ecosystem or entrepreneurship ecosystem is the social and economic environment affecting the local or regional entrepreneurship. Businesses located within places serving as incubators for creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship have a greater chance of success. Almost all of the globally successful company formations of the last decades, such as Apple, Yahoo, Google and Facebook were located in one of only two startup ecosystems in the USA - Silicon Valley and Boston.
Laurent Salvador Lamothe is a Haitian businessman, economist, and political figure who has served in the government of Haiti as Minister of Foreign Affairs since October 2011, having been appointed Prime Minister on 4 May 2012. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of the company Global Voice Group. On 14 December 2014, Lamothe resigned as Prime Minister for personal reasons.
Landesa Rural Development Institute is a nonprofit organization that partners with governments and local organizations to secure legal land rights for world's poorest families. Since 1967, Landesa has helped more than 100 million poor families in 35 countries gain legal control over their land. When families have secure rights to land, they can invest in their land to sustainably increase their harvests and reap the benefits—improved nutrition, health, education, and dignity.
Yunus Social Business (YSB) is a profit and non-profit venture fund that turns philanthropic donations into investments in sustainable social businesses. Companies like Impact Water that have been financed by YSB tackle similar challenges to those traditionally addressed by aid agencies or charities, providing employment, education, healthcare, clean water and clean energy to over 3 million people worldwide.
Jaime "Jim" Ayala is a social entrepreneur based in Manila, Philippines. He founded the Hybrid Network, a cluster of social businesses that pioneered the "hybrid value chain" concept. Before he became a social entrepreneur, he had a long career in business, as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and CEO of Ayala Land, a publicly listed company. Ayala was recognized by Ernst & Young as the 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year and the 2012 Social Entrepreneur of the Year for the Philippines. In 2013, he was named as one of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship's 24 World Social Entrepreneurs of the Year.
