Fw: The Grameen Creative Lab - Newsletter May 2011

my buzz & my blog "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world." George Washington Carver What is Social Entrepreneurship? Statement of Faith You can find other "Market with Meaning" but you definitely want to see "Profit with Purpose". I personally "Believe in Kingdom Transformation" because I know there is only ONE "Life for Significant". my facebook  &  my twitter  &  my linkedin --- 2011年6月17日 星期五，Saskia Bruysten <info@grameencl.com> 寫道﹕ 寄件人: Saskia Bruysten <info@grameencl.com> 主題: The Grameen Creative Lab - Newsletter May 2011 收件人: "Mr. Houghton Wan" <incubator.hou@gmail.com> 日期: 2011年6月17日,星期五,上午2:32 The Grameen Creative Lab is passionate about social business. We hope that you are too. Check out what we have been up to lately!  Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Dear friend of social business,   The month of May has been full of many exciting activities and events that bring the social business movement to the next level.   Inside this month’s issue:  Bangladesh: An overview of issues surrounding Grameen Bank & Prof. Yunus is available online Colombia: OpenIDEO hosts a Grameen Caldas social business challenge YY Haiti: First Social Business Labs were conducted in Haiti YY Mumbai: The Yunus Social Business Fund Mumbai has made its first investment Wiesbaden: Delegation from Luxembourg visits “Social Business City” Wiesbaden Social Business initiative launched at EU level The idea of social business spreads at events in Georgia and the Ukraine 3rd International GCL Klassentreffen brought together 125 participants The Worldwide Social Business Day is coming up Social Business Forum Asia to take place in Japan in July Save the date: Upcoming events in 2011   We are looking forward to an exciting month in June, with the worldwide Social Business Day on June 28thand much more! We invite you to get involved by contacting: Mr. Hans Reitz (Co-Founder)                                         hans.reitz@grameencl.com Ms. Saskia Bruysten (Founding Member, CEO)        saskia.bruysten@grameencl.com   We are looking forward to hearing from you. Do it with joy!   The Grameen Creative Lab   Bangladesh: An overview of issues surrounding Grameen Bank & Prof. Yunus is available online As you know on May 12, Prof. Yunus announced his resignation from his post as Managing Director of the Grameen Bank and handed the position to Deputy Managing Director Nurjahan Begum while the Board conducts a search for a permanent replacement. Prof. Yunus underlined the importance of keeping the Grameen Bank independent in a letter to his colleagues at the Bank, as well as a letter to the Bank’s 8.3 million borrower-owners. Prof. Yunus has worked tirelessly to create other independent social businesses, which promote sustainable social impact. These include Grameen Telecom, a Bangladeshi mobile telephone provider, and Grameen Danone, which offers affordable yoghurt as nutritional supplement to Bangladesh's poorest communities. It now seems as if the government is trying take control of these enterprises as well as the bank. Many events have taken place in the last months regarding these issues. In order to get an overview of the recent happenings concerning Prof. Yunus and the Grameen Bank have a look at the summary here If you want to support, you can do any of the following: Join the Facebook groups: Support Yunus (7,127 members) and Unite for Yunus (5,715 members) Post tweets on Twitter Write Op-Eds for your local newspaper Rally Bangladeshi expat communities in your country Get in touch with influential friends to raise awareness   Colombia: OpenIDEO hosts a Grameen Caldas social business challenge Grameen Caldas: our social business company in Caldas and ASOCALREP, the government owned organization managing local poverty reduction funds, is currently still fulfilling the conditions on the funds transfer that will enable our social business fund and the microfinance organization to start operations Fortified Panela:We signed the first Social Business Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Caldas to build a fortified Panela (national drink in Colombia) business in cooperation with the mayor of Supia, a municipality in Caldas. Our partner DSM is working with us to create the formula and we will try to produce the first (test) fortified panela within the next two months. Bienestar, our healthcare social business, has about 90 subscribers right now and will continue to grow. At the same time we are revising the business model to make sure it will be sustainable in the long run. Holistic Social Business Strategies for our focus areas of nutrition, education, health and housing are being developed as part of our Grameen Caldas investment strategy. Open Ideo, world design leader connecting 16 000 people worldwide, just hosted a new challenge addressing the question: “How might we use social business to improve health in low-income communities?”. Everybody is welcome to join the challenge and share their social business ideas! Felipe Valencia- Dongo gave a one-page-interview about social business for the leading newspaper in Peru titled “Social Business can become a trend in the region”. Links: Newspaper and TV interview (both only in Spanish) The team has grown significantly. Thanks to the contribution of many new volunteers and Wharton MBA graduates we are significantly increasing the implementation speed of the Holistic Social Business Movement of Caldas. Students of the Master program in Design for Social Business at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Italy conducted a field trip to Colombia for 3 weeks. Together with GCL they explored the social issues in the country and worked on developing new social business models and improving the ones of the existing initiatives YY Haiti: First Social Business Labs were conducted in Haiti   The first two Social Business Labs were conducted in the mid of May in Haiti. Project Lead Eva from Accenture and Country Initiative Director Sophie attended the events as well. As a local partner Voilà and Voilà Foundation sponsored the event. Amongst the 80 participants were NGOs, potential Social Business entrepreneurs, students and many individuals who were successfully infected with the YY virus. An excellent relationship has been built up with the ClintonBushHaitiFund. Now the YY Haiti team will hand in a proposal to CBHF for funding three to four social businesses in Haiti. GCL Haiti signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Youth Build International. Together with Haiti Partners GCL Haiti is developing concepts to sustainably develop seven schools in Haiti. First investors have committed to the YY Haiti Social Business Fund so that GCL Haiti will be able to set up at least four Social Businesses in 2011. Our due diligence process has been reviewed and adjusted to our lessons learned so far: In a four step process 24 promising social business projects are currently being analyzed. We are looking for further investors and donors who are interested in supporting YY Haiti and act as pioneers in shaping the social business movement. Please contact our Country Initiative Director sophie.eisenmann@grameencl.com for further discussion.  Read our latest news about our social business movement in Haiti here: http://www.grameencreativelab.com/live-examples/yy-haiti.html YY Mumbai: The Yunus Social Business Fund Mumbai has made its first investment The GCL Mumbai office, also known as “YY Mumbai”, is expanding with 3 new volunteers joining the team in June and July. You´ll find us at the Bombay Hub in Bandra, and in a couple of months we hope to move into our own office. Since the very successful lab Hans Reitz conducted in February, we´ve had a great response to the concept of social business and have been busy working on several different initiatives  The Yunus Social Business Fund Mumbai has made its first investment into a World Bank- promoted slum sanitation project that SPARC (led by Magasaysay award winners, Sheela Patel and Jockin Arputham) will undertake in Mumbai slums. It is actively considering a second investment into an innovative startup that “crowdsources” zero interest loans to microfinance project implementers on the ground. The Fund is also in the process of detailing a partnership agreement with a leading social business incubator to co-invest into promising social business startups that they will mentor. One of India´s top corporate groups has agreed to fund a chair of social business at a top management school in India. We are very excited about this potential project- keep watching this space for developments. We are in the process of evaluating the viability of replicating the Grameen Shakti model in India, particularly in off-grid villages. We are currently in the process of creating a business model and then will approach potential funders. We welcome interested collaborators/ investors for this project. Please contact Aarti.wig@grameencl.com to know more. The YY Mumbai social business club created out of the lab in February is getting geared up for June 28, Prof Yunus´s birthday and social business day. As part of the global social business day celebration, several social business enthusiasts from India will be creating YY videos, messages for Prof Yunus, wish lists and posting pictures onto the GCL website. The YY Mumbai team is heading to Dhaka for social business day! Huzaifa Khorakhiwala, our ambassador in India has promised to create a YY social business club network for universities across India as a birthday gift to Prof Yunus. He will announce this in Dhaka on social business day. Wiesbaden: Delegation from Luxembourg visits “Social Business City” Wiesbaden A delegation from Luxemburg, headed by the University of Luxembourg and joined by his Royal Highness Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Prince Guillaume visited Wiesbaden. The objective of the study visit was to gather insights from the Social Business City and to evaluate the potential of social business for politics, academia and business in Luxemburg The delegation was joined by HRH Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg, the Minister for development and solidarity economy, the Mayor of Esch, the Mayor of Wiltz, the deputy mayor of the city of Luxembourg, and a number of CEOs and high level staff from the University of Luxembourg The visit began with a formal reception at the town hall where the delegation was welcomed by Lord Mayor Dr. Müller During the rest of the day the delegation collected best practice examples of social business initiatives from partners of the Social Business City to facilitate knowledge transfer to Luxembourg Among others were “Social Business Women”, an exhibition of the Leonardo School Award run by the “Wiesbaden Stiftung”, as well as “Lalaland”, the social business for women and young families. The delegation also learned more about the social business concept underlying the production of coffee sold at Perfect Day and led a conversation with representatives of youth organizations in Wiesbaden The day closed at Schloss Freudenberg with a presentation from EBS University about their Danone Chair for Social Business Social Business initiative launched at EU level As part of the reform of the EU Single Market Act, Commissioner Michel Barnier has launched a Social Business Initiative. To define the best ecosystem for Social Business to flourish within the EU, the Commissioner has launched an expert commission. Saskia Bruysten was selected as member of this committee of experts and EU policy makers. The first expert workshop took place on May 25thand 26th in Brussels at the EU Commission Recommendations were made regarding the actions that the EU can take in order to create a supportive ecosystem for social business in Europe The results of the workshop will be discussed in detail within the European Union and voted upon. The initiative will be officially announced this autumn EU Commissioner Barnier is invited to officially announce the EU Social Business Initiative at the Global Social Business Summit 2011 in Vienna The idea of social business spreads at events in Georgia and the Ukraine Saskia Bruysten spoke about social business in front of 300students at the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation 4thYouth Forum “Zavtra”which took place outside of Kiev on May 23, 2011. The students were all recipients of the prestigious scholarship of the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation. Other speakers at the event included former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, thesuccessful Ukrainian businessman Victor Pinchuk, as well as representatives of the Ukrainian government. The Europe Week 2011 took place in Georgia at the end of May. The series of events, which are aimed at building closer ties between Georgia and Europe in the fields of culture, civil society, education and politics, were organized by the Europe House Georgia. Saskia Bruysten held a speech during the Europe Week in Tbilisi, Georgia, in front of 100 people and participated in a panel discussion with representatives of the Georgian social business scene. 3rd International GCL Klassentreffen brought together 125 participants The 3rd International Klassentreffen took place in Wiesbaden on May 13 – 15, 2011. This yearly event is a “class reunion” (Klassentreffen in German), which brings together social business enthusiasts from many different countries and fields of work. The main theme of this year’s event was “Social business as a means to fulfill the promise of the Millennium Development Goals”. The 125 participants who represented NGOs, universities, companies, government organizations, etc. participated in interactive workshops which tackled the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The international participants from 20 different countries brainstormed and shared ideas on how to use social business as a way for achieving the MDGs and creating a sustainable social impact Sharing ideas, networking, spreading the social business spirit and a great deal of joy were all an integral part of this year’s Klassentreffen The Worldwide Social Business Day is coming up  On June 28, 2011 the second Worldwide Social Business Day will take place all over the world. On this day we will celebrate Professor Yunus’ concept of social business, look at what has been achieved so far, spread the word about this new type of business, reinforce the commitment to this visionary idea, and discuss the future of the social business movement. There will be a lot of action online on our website www.grameencreativelab.com so do check it out on June 28th. You can also participate in the Social Business Day virtually and we hope you will! There will be video messages coming from universities, entrepreneurs, companies, etc. from all over the world - Japan, Singapore, Italy, France, Germany, Canada, USA and more. To get an idea you can check out here what people around the world contributed during the Social Business Day last year. You can send a video message or a photo, post on social media networks and actively get involved. If you wish to make a special contribution to the Social Business Day 2011 please contact Leonhard Nima at leonhard.nima@grameencl.com. Social Business Forum Asia to take place in Japan in July This year between July 21 – 23 the first Social Business Forum Asia with the official theme “Self-reliable projects for survivors of East Japan Earthquake to recover, rebuild and reconnect their lives” will take place in Fukuoka, Japan. The focus of this forum is to facilitate the creation of self-sustainable projects for survivors of the East Japan Earthquake and help them recover, rebuild and reconnect their lives through the practice of social business. Mid-term and long-term social business measures will be examined in order to support the reconstruction of the affected areas and the lives of the people living in them. The forum will also act as a way to reinforce the joint efforts and the needed cooperation between companies, governments, NPO/NGO and individuals, as well to spread the idea of social business to solve social problems and create a better future in Japan, Asia and all around the world. The event will include workshops, a panel discussion, a public symposium and more. Professor Yunus himself will take part in the Social Business Forum Asia. Other participants will include representatives from the Yunus Centre, the Grameen Creative Lab, as well as representatives of national and international companies, universities, NPOs/NGOs and governmental organizations from China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Japan, etc. If you would like to receive more information, please send an email to info@gcl.kyushu-u.ac.jp Save the date: upcoming events in 2011 Please save the date in your calendars for the following exciting upcoming events in 2011: Social Business Day // 28 June 2011 worldwide: social business supporters from all over the world are connected on a virtual and personal basis during one entire day. All you need to participate is an internet connection! There will also be a physical event in Dhaka – if you’re interested in attending, please contact Verena.Marquardt@grameencl.com to learn more. Social Business Forum Asia // 21-23 July 2011:The first Social Business Forum Asia will take place in Fukuoka, Japan this July. Global Social Business Summit // 10-12 November 2011: This year the Global Social Business Summit will move on to a new location in Europe! Save the date for 10-12 November 2011 in Vienna, Austria and check out the official website www.gsbs2011.com. To get an idea of  what happens during GSBS take a look at the video about last year’s summit here Friend on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend SAVE THE DATE: * 28 June 2011 Worldwide Social Business Day online * 21 - 23 July 2011 Social Business Forum Asia in Japan * 10-12 November 2011 Global Social Business Summit in Vienna  follow on Twitter |