A1 Social Enterprise Chronicles

Popularizing the World of Social Entrepreneurship

[a1sec]

Stephen Ritz: A teacher growing green in the South Bronx | Video on TED.com

Green Bronx Machine: Behold the Glory and Bounty That Is Bronx County

A whirlwind of energy and ideas, Stephen Ritz is a teacher in New York's tough South Bronx, where he and his kids grow lush gardens for food, greenery -- and jobs. Just try to keep up with this New York treasure as he spins through the many, many ways there are to grow hope in a neighborhood many have written off, or in your own. (Filmed at TEDxManhattan.)

[a1sec]

ThinkImpact: Experience Immersive Education

ThinkImpact (www.thinkimpact.com) is an organization that provides opportunities for university students to travel to rural communities to learn social entrepreneurship in a hands-on way. I have an intimate understanding of the organization as I participated in ThinkImpact Kenya this past summer (see previous post for description on my work in Kinani). ThinkImpact was founded by Saul Garlick. In 2002 he visited a village in South Africa only to observe children being taught under the trees, as there were no classrooms for them to meet in. Perturbed by this discovery, at 18 years old, Saul promised to build a school for the community once he raised $10,000 from friends and family back home. He succeeded in this endeavor only to realize during his next visit to the community that the school was in bad shape, although it did have sufficient space for all the students.

Saul found this experience to be frustrating, along with his experience in the newly created ThinkImpact organization through which he had already started providing opportunities for students to pursue traditional development work, because he realized that the traditional model for aid was often unsustainable and difficult to scale up. That's when the Saul, and ThinkImpact, pivoted its approach towards a human-centered social innovation and design model. The redirected approach is based on his firm belief in the power of market-based solutions to address the challenges these communities face in creative, sustainable and effective ways.

In the past, ThinkImpact has only had programs in Africa (South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya), but is now expanding to Latin America as well (Panama). Unfortunately, due to the recent events that have occurred in Kenya my sources have informed me that ThinkImpact will not be sending any students there this upcoming summer. I'm assuming the organization made this decision based on the fact that they have had difficulty in the past filling spots for the Kenya program in particular, and they figure that the recent attacks will make getting students for the Kenya program even more difficult. On the bright side, ThinkImpact is expanding, and programs will be up and running starting this winter!

Original Photo Courtesy of Eric Chen

[a1sec]

Welcome to A1 Social Enterprise Chronicles!

I'm Sam, an aspiring Social Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, and Photographer. I have always loved to travel, and have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to visit and experience many amazing cultures and places around the globe. The countries I've visited that have had the greatest impact on my path to Social Entrepreneurship are Costa Rica, South Africa and most recently, Kenya.

In Costa Rica I stayed on an organic farm in a remote location on the Caribbean Coast called Punta Mona, which is where the enterprise, Kopali Organics (www.kopali.net), was founded. The following year I went to South Africa, which I had a particular affinity to as my parents immigrated from "Safferland" to the US in 1980. While in Cape Town I did some community service work in Khayelitsha, one of the city's biggest and most notorious townships. This past summer, I ventured to Kenya as a Scholar with ThinkImpact (www.thinkimpact.com) where I stayed in a community about an hour outside of Mombasa called Kinani. Our mission there was first to immerse ourselves as best we could into the community, then we went around  getting to know the community members themselves as to determine who we want on our design teams. Once we established our teams, we then dove into an asset-based design process where we worked with our team members to develop a business that would also have a positive impact on the community by using the assets available to the community. My team ended up creating Katakiu Enterprises (Katakiu refers to the feeling of quenching your thirst in Swahili), a water collection and distribution service.

My infatuation with Social Entrepreneurship began the fall of my Senior year at the University of Southern California when I found myself in an Intro to Social Entrepreneurship class. I clearly remember going into class on that first day thinking I was going to learn how to make the next Facebook, but I quickly learned that wasn't the case. Rather, as I listened to everyone go around the room and explain why they were taking this course, I realized I was exactly where I wanted to be. I have had experience working in both business and philanthropy environments, and neither really made sense to me as making money for wealth's sake didn't appeal to me, while I realized how difficult it can be to make a substantial income while working for a charity-based organization. Thus, I discovered that Social Entrepreneurship was the perfect model for what I wanted to do.

Since this moment of inception for me, I have done all that I can to be involved in the industry, including being a part of inaugural USC's Social Innovation Design Lab and working with ThinkImpact in Kenya. I have fallen in love with Social Entrepreneurship and with each day I find myself becoming more infatuated as I learn of all the amazing initiatives out there trying to save the world. So I have decided to create this blog to let the rest of you out there to know what efforts are being taken to make an impact on the world. Ultimately I hope my chronicles here will have an impact on popularizing the enterprises I write about, so all of you can learn about all the amazing efforts being taken!