Social Innovation Stories
Latin America
Lumni – Colombia
• Founded by Felipe Vergara
• Lumni is a pioneer in the field of human capital financing. The company designs and manages social-investment funds that invest in the education of diversified pools of students. In exchange, each student commits to pay a fixed percentage of income for 120 months after graduation.
• www.lumni.com.co
Citivox – Mexico
• Founded by Oscar Salazar
• CitiVox uses mobile technology to build and improve the relationship between citizens and government through increased citizen participation, accountability and transparency in government. Citizens are heard and participate in the decision making process, are able to control the results, and have a better quality of life. Public officials can make informed policy decisions, are authorized to act on key issues in an effective and efficient, and better can affect public opinion.
• www.citivox.com
Instituto Tellus – Brazil
• Founded by Marina Cançado
• Instituto Tellus – Description needed
• www.tellus.org.br
I-Dev International - Peru
• Founded by Jason Spindler
• I-DEV designs and builds economically viable, market-based businesses and industries at the base of the pyramid. We do this by aligning the interests of corporations and local communities to create bottom line value for both. I-DEV combines business savvy & entrepreneurship with grassroots development expertise to provide professional CSR & development project design and management.
• http://idevinternational.com
North America
Unreasonable Institute – Boulder, Colorado
• Founded by Daniel Epstein
• The Unreasonable Institute is solving the world’s biggest problems by arming the entrepreneurs who can take them on with the mentorship, capital, and network to make it happen. Each year, the Institute brings together 25 entrepreneurs from every corner of the globe to live under the same roof for six weeks in Boulder, Colorado. These entrepreneurs receive training and build long-term relationships with 50 world-class mentors.
• www.unreasonableinstitute.org
KIPP Foundation – San Francisco, California
• Founded by Richard Barth
• KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. KIPP builds a partnership among parents, students, and teachers that puts learning first. By providing outstanding educators, more time in school learning, and a strong culture of achievement, KIPP is helping all students climb the mountain to and through college.
• www.kipp.org
Genesys Works – Houston, Texas
• Founded by Rafael Álvarez
• Genesys Works enables inner-city high school students to break through barriers and discover through meaningful work experience that they can succeed as professionals in the corporate world.
• www.genesysworks.org
India/Southeast Asia
NextDrop – India
• Founded by Anu Sridharan
• NextDrop provides households with accurate and timely information about local piped water delivery, over cell phones already widely in use in India. This information comes from water utility employees who call our interactive voice response system when they open valves to distribute water. These reports are used to generate real-time water availability updates and notifications 30-60 minutes in advance of water delivery. In addition, NextDrop uses crowd sourcing to verify the accuracy of utility reports and create a feedback loop, introducing much needed visibility for engineers in the water utility.
• www.nextdrop.org
Piramal Water – India
• Founded by Anand Shah
• Piramal Water finds viable mass-market solutions to India’s drinking water crisis. Their water is sold under the brand “Sarvajal”, meaning “Water for All.” We recruit local entrepreneurs to sell water to their communities from Piramal Water-owned filtration equipment.
• www.sarvajal.com
Attero Recycling – India
• Founded by Nitin and Rohan Gupta
• Attero Recycling provides an environmentally friendly solution to the problem of e-waste. This organization is committed to initiating a socially responsible movement towards electronic waste. It views e-waste not just as waste, but as an important resource that can be made useful instead of shunning it as a social and environmental burden.
• www.attero.in
Sub-Saharan Africa
One Acre Fund – Kenya
• Founded by Andrew Youn
• One Acre Fund makes low-interest loans and provides agricultural education to East African farmers. It creates groups of 200 farmers who get better prices by buying modern commercial seeds in bulk. The fund also provides crop insurance and claims that on average farmers working with them double their profits in a single planting season.
• www.oneacrefund.org
Medic Mobile – Malawi
• Founded by Josh Nesbit
• Medic Mobile uses appropriate technologies to create connected, coordinated health systems that save more lives. Medic Mobile develops and extends existing open-source platforms, including FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap. These tools support community health worker coordination and management, community mobilization for vaccination and satellite clinics, logistics and supply chain management, referrals, routine data collection, and mapping of health services.
• www.medicmobile.org
First Access Financial – Tanzania
• Founded by Nicole Stubbs
• First Access is pioneering a system of financial profiles for the global informal sector, beginning in Tanzania. Its mission is to reduce the cost of lending and borrowing capital in informal economies, where most transactions are not traceable and people have limited financial records to demonstrate what they earn or what they own. The goal is to build a low-cost, highly-scalable system that not only creates value and jobs, but that leads to efficient social returns by expanding opportunities in informal markets – through business, education, and home ownership.
• www.first-access.org
MASS Design – Burundi
• Founded by Michael Murphy
• MASS Design designs, build, and advocate for buildings that improve health and strengthen communities. MASS works to deliver the highest possible impact at the lowest possible cost to the groups we serve.
• www.massdesign.org
SHE – Social Health Enterprises - Rwanda
• Founded by Elizabeth Scharpf
• Millions of girls and women in developing countries miss up to 50 days of school/work per year because they do not have access to affordable sanitary pads when they menstruate. SHE intends to fulfill girls’ and women’s unmet need by helping local women in developing countries jump-start their own businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable, quality, and eco-friendly sanitary pads. SHE will look to use local raw materials, instead of all imported materials, to ensure affordability and accessibility.
• www.sheinnovates.com
Design to Improve Life - Zimbabwe
• Founded by Johan Adam Lindeballe
• INDEX: Design to Improve Life promotes the application of designs and design processes to improve vital areas of people’s lives worldwide. Design offers environmental, social, and economically sustainable tools to make the world a safe and better environment for people, and design processes are the ways of working that identify solutions based on the knowledge, responsiveness, and methodology of designers.
• www.designtoimprovelife.dk
Middle East/North Africa
Souktel – Palestine
• Founded by Jacob Korenblum
• Souktel designs and delivers mobile phone services that link people with jobs and connect aid agencies with communities who need help. Created in the Middle East, our JobMatch, AidLink, and Voice Response technologies are changing lives across the developing world.
• www.souktel.org
HasassMap – Egypt
• Founded by Engy Ghozlan
• HarassMap introduced a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. It gives women a way to anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment as soon as they happen, using a simple text message from their mobile phone. By mapping these reports online, the entire system will act as an advocacy, prevention, and response tool, highlighting the severity and pervasiveness of the problem.
• www.harassmap.org
