Date: Saturday, April 21 - Sunday, April 22, 2012 Venue: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
The Global Health & Innovation Conference is the world's largest global health conference and social entrepreneurship conference. This must-attend, thought-leading conference annually convenes 2,200 leaders, changemakers, students, and professionals from all fields of global health, international development, and social entrepreneurship. Register during January to secure the lowest registration rate.
The conference's confirmed speakers include:
Keynote Addresses
• Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer, Acumen Fund
• Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea
• Jeffrey Sachs, PhD, Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University; Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University; Special Advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon
• Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, MD, MPH, Director of Health, Millennium Village Project, Earth Institute at Columbia University
THE INK CONFERENCE, in associated with TED, is an annual conference that aims to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers from a range of disciplines such as art, design, science, social entrepreneurship, sports and technology.
INK 2010 featured Speakers such as science educator and innovator Arvind Gupta, filmmaker James Cameron, founder of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly, design guru Philippe Starck, and anti-trafficking activist Sunitha Krishnan.
THE INK FELLOWS PROGRAM will recruit 20 young innovators to attend the INK 2011 Conference in Jaipur, India, December 8th – 11th, 2011.
A post published at the end of September on the Good Intentions are not Enough blog, questioned the viability of introduction of new bottom of the pyramid innovations such as the cook stoves hailed by Hillary Clinton during the recently ended MDG summit.
The gist of the post is that as benevolent a gesture the stoves are for the 1.2 billion people considered to live in poverty worldwide who will use them, the durability of the stoves is not as assured. This raises the question of whether the stoves and similar social innovations are in and of themselves a sustainable alternative to what is already being used.
Included in the Good Intentions post is also a quote from a vice president of the UN Foundation saying apart from distributing the stoves, “You’ll need a supply chain and business model that delivers them, not on a one-time basis, but as a continuing enterprise.”
And without such a supply chain, after the 2 to 5 years and without a steady supply channel, won’t the target beneficiaries just revert to the traditional kerosene and wood?
This is the oft neglected side of social enterprise. The question of how sustainable must the social entrepreneur’s efforts be? And does it mean that just because an enterprise is for profit that business effectiveness and value for money aside from other financial variables take second place to social impact?
The impetus to scrutinise the value of such socially-oriented innovative solutions has become more topical with the aid versus trade debate. Proponents for trade such as William Easterly have argued for business, being recently quoted in the Financial Times that: “current experience and history both speak loudly that the only real engine of growth out of poverty is private business ...”
And with such voices coupled with austerity measures among traditional donor countries (though the UK unexpectedly increased international aid), social business initiatives to mitigate government and market failures in developing countries are sure to claim the limelight.
Social entrepreneurship must include a strategy for achieving financial sustainability, and that includes ensuring that aside from the sentimental value of providing solar lighting, water pumps and eco-friendly stoves amongst other new technologies, that the nitty gritty business essentials such as supply chains and customer care are included in the package, from the outset.
Let’s remember that without the business model there can’t be a lasting and durable social impact.
SAGE Kenya is a country chapter of the Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship, a global community of teenage entrepreneurs sharing a common purpose. Started in 2009, Sage Kenya’s mission is to help create the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders whose innovations and social enterprises address the world’s major unmet needs.
Much of Sage Kenya’s work is currently within Western Kenya preparing students for success in college and in the competitive global community by linking them to role models from Maseno and Great Lakes Universities.
SAGE Kenya has also worked with high schools within Kisumu East and West District to inculcate the culture of entrepreneurship among students by assisting them to set up model entrepreneurial projects.
The organization also has a mentorship programme working with university and polytechnics to assign one to two student mentors to each high school to assist participating schools to prepare for district competitions. This opportunity provides the students with a platform to develop their problem solving, opportunity-seeking and informed risk-taking entrepreneurial acumen that will be of use in starting their own commercial or social ventures in the future.
Current projections are that SAGE Kenya will be instrumental in creating between 100 to 400 more new entrepreneurial ventures annually.
During a recent competition, students from various schools presented ventures that included:
Agriculture: a solar anti-ripening machine made from local materials such as polythene bags.
Health: a student design team presented a demonstration kit that educates the youth on the effect of nicotine to the lungs. This model is now being used by the Drug Abuse Campaign in Kenya.
Technology: a solar water purifier has been developed .
Food security: a Hydroponic Cultivation system has been developed using designed Shade nets that use old mosquito nets and local tree poles that reduce the cost of pest control among farmers.
E-Government: some student have developed a central database system that can be adopted by the Government to have all the government operations in and a central system.
Eco-Energy: using Jatropha as alternative source of energy, some students have developed a model plantation for a jatropha seed nursery.
Recycling: some students have started to sell curio product made from water hyacinth which is a nuisance from the Lake Victoria.
The timing for a programmes like SAGE Kenya cannot be better, and the organization is lobbying the government to make the education system more relevant and rigorous whilst at the same time promoting an entrepreneurial culture amongst students.
Indeed SAGE Kenya’s approach is a “pattern-changing idea to practical innovation”. The emphasis on the practical, scalable and cost-effective shows that it is a progressive organization that teaches students to create sustainable profits and more jobs for their peers.
Youth 4 a Better Future Campaign is an ongoing environmental and social campaign that promotes market driven agriculture, enterprise development, environmental conservation and research.
It is an initiative of Maa Community Foundation, Health Awareness Peer Education Programme (HAPEP), IMPACT Kenya Youth Initiative, Tabaiki Sports Association, KEYFORD and STOMAZ.
Its main objective is to raise awareness on environmental, health, sports and entrepreneurship development.
Currently the project has a very successful solid waste management enterprise in Narok town, a bee keeping project, a digital village centre, a goat project, an organic tomato farm project, a tree nurseries project, a micro finance and woodlot project. The target is 100 of such enterprises by November 2010, and by 2013 the founder Ole Mepukori projects that there will be 500 successful social enterprises across Kenya.
Yipe.org recently got the chance to chat with Ole Mepukori who said that he started in 2008, but opened doors to his friends who brought in their friends and so it went.
Right now the project has youth groups from really remote areas selling their goats at a profit to markets as far as Mombasa. “Yes” Ole Mepukori told Yipe, “we want all Kenyan youth to come join us and in ten years we will all look back and say, ‘we helped build Kenya’".
Ole Mepukori adds that the project is not only limited to young people, as he believes everybody has something to offer for the advancement of this cause, and even if that person is an eighty year old granny they can also play a vital role.
He concludes “Lets believe, say little, work hard and Be Young Forever!”
If you are interested in being a Youth 4 a Better Future join the community here >>>>
