Laurent Marbacher | Learn & create Ways and Means Toolkits As the largest non-profit urban housing developer in the US, The Community Builders (TCB) has developed and sustained communities for low-income families for more than 40 years. Facing a series of new challenges, opportunities, and technologies, TCB began to re-examine its approach for helping residents and communities realize their full potential. Looking to evolve from the role of landlord to innovator, TCB came to IDEO for help creating a series of tenant services and opportunities. IDEO began conducting fieldwork, visiting mixed- income housing sites to examine how tenants interact with TCB communities. IDEO’s framework defines and projects the trajectories of tenants as they attain financial independence. Since the conclusion of the project, TCB ordered 200 of the Ways and Means platform binders and has partnered with consulting firm Bridgespan, to develop a detailed new site operating practice based on Ways and Means. Project date: 2007
The easiest way to find an apartment rental - Zumper 10 | How To Design Products For People Making $2 A Day Proximity Designs--led by Debbie Aung Din and Jim Taylor--works to reduce poverty and advance the well-being of rural families in Myanmar, where they’ve worked since 2004. They design, produce, and distribute products, like their foot-operated irrigation pump, that are affordable for low-income farmers and help to increase their income and productivity. To date, they’ve sold more than 110,000 items to Burmese farmers, using a model of designing and producing tools that are affordable to those making less than $2 a day. How did you decide to select a business model in which you treat the poor as customers rather than recipients of charity? And do you believe this to be a faster way out of generational poverty? Giving things away is hard to do on a large and sustainable scale. When we treat people as customers--not as recipients of charity--they have the ultimate power and choice to decide whether they want to buy what we’re offering. Why was the foot-treadle pump successful? 1. 2. 3. 4.
4 Principles For Creating Change, And 4 Barriers That Make It Harder Many people now are struggling to make change; to drive social or environmental impact whether they are social entrepreneurs or people working from within organizations to make a difference. In this piece, we wanted to focus on thinking about how communities of change makers can thrive. It’s not enough for change making to be the sole remit of a handful of do-gooders or NGOs. By highlighting some of the barriers and core principles that are vital to the success of a world in which everyone is a change maker, we hope to begin to mainstream the art of change making and destroy the social entrepreneur’s monopoly on social change. Barrier 1: Experts As Idols Too often change making is outsourced to experts or social entrepreneurs rather than community members. Barrier 2: Conditions Of Problem Solving Are Overlooked Much of the time, we are quick to jump to tactical problem solving without fully reflecting on whether the conditions for it are put in place. Barrier 4: Learning Is One to One
The Social Marketplace - Social Marketing for Social Impact Things to Do in San Francisco Ever since the Gold Rush, plucky dreamers have headed west to the City By The Bay. And there is something in the air here – aside from the patchy morning fog – that continues to make San Francisco feel like a dream. Home of the Beat Generation and Haight-Ashbury’s Summer of Love, San Francisco nurtures progressive social and political movements that often rally the nation. Balanced on a peninsula near the San Andreas and Hayward faults with the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Bay to the east, the ground can sometimes feel shaky, but the beauty of the city endures.
OuiShare - Creative community for the Collaborative Economy Meet The Unreasonables Every year, the Unreasonable Institute gathers 25 social entrepreneurs from around the world into a house in Boulder, Colorado. For six weeks, these men and women meet with mentors and work on the business plans for their ventures, which run the gamut from increasing recycling in Mexico to cleaner burning coal for African farmers. During the last session, the participants were followed around by a camera crew, and we’ll be airing that footage here on Co.Exist. Their stories are inspiring in and of themselves, and perhaps in hearing about their struggles and successes, everyone working on a world-changing project (or thinking about starting one) can find a few lessons. This is a short preview of the upcoming season. Each week, we’ll be focusing on one of the participants; both the story of their project and the evolutions it--and they--go through while participating at the Institute.