Become Inspired by Jacqueline Novogratz to "Just Start" During Covid-19

Jacqueline Novogratz, Twitter.

Ten years ago I was sitting in an office building during my lunch breaks with Jacqueline Novogratz's book The Blue Sweater open on my lap. Then incredibly the following year I got to meet her at the East Africa launch of the book.

Jacqueline is one of my greatest role models and inspirations for her tenacious commitment to a better world, belief in dignity for all people, and compelling storytelling. I'm so excited to be able to see her livestreaming just about every day this month.

Manifesto for A Moral Revolution, audible.com.

Manifesto for A Moral Revolution: Practices to Build A Better World

Jacqueline released her new book on March 5: Manifesto for A Moral Revolution: Practices to Build A Better World.

Here's a summary of the book, shared by the publisher, Henry Holt and Company:

"In 2001, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact investing - Acumen's practice of "doing well by doing good."

"Nineteen years later, there's been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: impact investment is not only morally defensible but now also economically advantageous, even necessary. 

"Still, it isn't easy to reach a success that includes profits as well as mutually favorable relationships with workers and the communities in which they live. So how can today's leaders, who often kick off their enterprises with high hopes and short timetables, navigate the challenges of poverty and war, of egos and impatience, which have stymied generations of investors who came before? 

"Drawing on inspiring stories from change-makers around the world and on memories of her own most difficult experiences, Jacqueline divulges the most common leadership mistakes and the mind-sets needed to rise above them. The culmination of thirty years of work developing sustainable solutions for the problems of the poor, So You Want to Change the World offers the perspectives necessary for all those-whether ascending the corporate ladder or bringing solar light to rural villages-who seek to leave this world better off than they found it."

Daily Practices with Jacqueline Novogratz

Join Jacqueline’s Daily Leadership Practices Series exploring what it takes to create meaningful social change. The first session, "It Will Take All of Us," was livestreamed on May 5 at 10:30 AM EDT.

You can register for the free online events. I registered for all of them. But you don't really need to register for the ones on the website that appear in color blocks and are organized by Acumen. Those are livestreaming from Jacqueline's Facebook page.

The May 6 livestream was lovely. She told us to "just start." Watch it on her Facebook page.

On May 5 she gave us a preview of that May 6 livestream, posting on Facebook, "Most people want to change the world, especially now. But too many sit and wait for a sense of purpose. Those strategies lead to more waiting. So just start.

"Join me on Wednesday, May 6th at 10:30am EDT as I share from my new book an essential short list of leadership practices for everyone who wants to do good in this world. For 3 weeks I am hosting daily readings of 12 practices exploring what it takes to create change. On Wednesday I will livestream from my page our second session: Just Start."

Jacqueline Novogratz, Jacqueline Novogratz Facebook May 6, 2020.

Jaqueline Novogratz

"Jacqueline’s work began in 1986 when she quit her job on Wall Street to co-found Rwanda’s first microfinance institution, Duterimbere. The experience inspired her to write the bestseller, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor, and create Acumen. Indeed, when she founded Acumen in 2001, few had heard of the words impact investing. Nineteen years later, under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen has invested $128 million to build more than 128 social enterprises across Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States. These companies have leveraged an additional $611 million and brought basic services like affordable education, health care, clean water, energy and sanitation to more than 260 million people. In 2015, Fast Company named Acumen one of the world’s Top 10 Most Innovative Not-for-Profits."

Continue reading Jacqueline's biography on the Acumen website.

Echoing Green: Work On Purpose webinar

Looking forward to this webinar! Thanks to fellow HeadCount volunteer, Melissa Brennan for letting me know about it.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM EST



Join author and Echoing Green senior vice president, Lara Galinsky, for a free and interactive webinar on how you can take practical steps to move your career forward in a way that is both good for you and good for the world.

In case you are not familiar with this fantastic organization, Echoing Green unleashes the next generation of talent to solve the world's biggest problems. Each year, through their world-renowned Fellowship program, they provide more than $1 million in seed funding to a diverse group of 40-50 of the world's most promising social entrepreneurs- dynamic visionaries focused on solving the world's most intractable social problems.

Over 25 years of working with these inspiring Fellows, Echoing Green has gleaned some of the best practices on social impact career creation, which they are now disseminating through their Work on Purpose program. The cornerstone of the program is the Work on Purpose book, co-written by webinar presenter, Lara Galinsky, who is also the author Be Bold: Create a Career with Impact. In this engaging webinar, Galinsky will also lead you in exercises to help you uncover your next career steps.

Register here.

Thinking of applying for an Echoing Green Fellowship?

If so then check out this video. Echoing Green team members give an overview of the organization's programs and delve deep into the application process. The application period opens on December 5 2011. Sign up here to receive updates from Echoing Green about the fellowship application process.

Here's to ...

... the crazy social entrepreneurs, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers who see things differently and have no respect for the status quo. You are among the people who are crazy enough to think you can change the world, and are the ones who do.

- Victor d’Allant
@dallant
Executive Director, Social Edge
October 11, 2011 Social Edge e-newsletter "Understanding Social Impact: Think Different"

Leading a Life, not just Living One

This talk by Chris Gergen inspires me:



Chris is the Director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute at Duke, and is also the Executive Director of Bull City Forward. Chris co-founded New Mountain Ventures, Life Entrepreneurs, LLC, and SMARTHINKING.

He also started a coffeehouse/bar that promoted the arts and music in Santiago, Chile, and helped launch the “Entrepreneur Corps”, a program sponsored by AmeriCorps*VISTA that placed 400 full-time business volunteers for a year of service in over 90 non-profits in the USA.

He is a board member of E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, DC, and started LEAD!, a non-profit leadership, entrepreneurship, and service program for Gonzaga College high school students in DC.

He co-authored the book Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives.

Social Enterprise @ Lehigh University

Lisa Boyd, Lehigh University, '10, is founder of "Jamiiwater: Improving Access to Sustainable Water in Rural Tanzania." The mission of the non-profit organization is to improve and sustain clean water systems. She hopes to educate people on how community involvement can leave a positive impact on Africa.

From an interview with Lisa Boyd, published in Lehigh's newspaper Brown & White:

It all started from an International Relations class with Professor Bruce Moon, who teaches International Relations 322, on all aspects of poverty and development in Tanzania . In my class group, we focused on what we thought was the biggest problem and ways to solve it. Over the past two years, I have done extensive research on water access in rural central Tanzania, specifically focusing on the sustainability of water systems.

During my grant research at the end of my junior year semester abroad in Tanzania, I biked to 23 different rural villages around the central area, slept in the villages, ate what people fed me and really got a sense of the communities. Living there and meeting these people really inspired me to keep going. It wasn't until I was actually there that I knew I wanted to continue the project after graduation.

(Read more about Lisa's research here.)

Jamii means "community" in Kiswahili, which is the local language in Tanzania. I am in the process of starting a formal non-profit organization called JamiiWater, which will work to repair clean water systems and provide the intensive community with the development to make their systems sustainable in the long run. Community involvement, interest and commitment are the most important factors in sustainable development. In rural Tanzania, two years after a water system installation, which usually costs about $80,000, already a quarter of water points were no longer working due to lack of parts, money or organization.

In the fall of 2008, I proposed to the Lehigh Eureka! Social Venture Creation Competition a plan to do research on these issues following my semester abroad in Tanzania. I won grand prize in the competition and received $5,000 of funding for a month of research last summer, with help from Jason Kramer, '10. I also applied for the Davis Projects for Peace grant and earned $10,000. These grants total $15,000 and should enable me to repair four to five broken water systems, as well as hire a full-time staff member to work with me.

I was excited to learn that Lisa presented at the 2010 Unite for Sight, Global Health & Innovation conference, held at Yale University, which I previously blogged about here. Lisa presented during the 5 minute Social Enterprise Pitch session.

Lisa and her sister are competing in a contest to win an Olympus camera and $5,000 ... check out their video submission here, and then go here to vote for them. (You'll need to log into your free YouTube account to vote.)




More social enterprise at Lehigh ... I stumbled upon this news in a Lehigh Field Hockey press release, too:

After graduating from Lehigh in 2006, Long Island native Melissa Fricke, who double majored in International Relations and French, and played in 55+ games for Lehigh's field hockey team, spent four months in Gganda, a village outside Kampala, Uganda’s capital. She volunteered in a children’s home for 24 children, and taught at the local primary school.

“During my senior year I took a strong interest in development and poverty issues and the severity of it in Africa,” said Fricke. “It was an international relations course on Ethical Dilemmas in World Politics that brought it all to light for me. The class discussions on poverty issues had me captivated with the debates what could and should be done. That is how I ended up in Africa a few months after graduation. What I intended to be learning experience quickly evolved into what it is today.”

After returning to the USA, she founded BULA - Better Understanding of Life in Africa. Through community supports and various fundraising efforts nearly $45,000 was raised prior to Fricke’s return to Uganda in December 2007. Upon her return she met Andrea Procopio, who arrived in Uganda in September, taking on many of Melissa’s responsibilities, and would eventually become Vice-President of the organization. Several other key volunteers emerged, and Fricke also encountered Tom Harrison, an architect from London who managed the construction project. On January 14, 2008 ground was broken for the reconstruction of St. Kizito Primary School.

Among the features of the new school building were eight cheerful, brightly-painted classrooms, spanning Nursery School to grade Primary 7, two teacher offices and a staff room, a water tank, solar lighting, windows and doors, toilet facilities, quality roofing and flooring, desks and chalk boards. Architects utilized several innovative building tactics, including the use of a foundation pad, and the use of Interlocking Stabilized Soil Blocks, the bricks that were used to build the school walls, which also become one of eight examples used in a case study for the United Nations.

“The ISSBs are an innovative technology that creates each block through the use of a machine that compacts a mixture of soil, cement and water,” Fricke explained. “Making the bricks on site with this technology allowed us to put to use the soil excavated for the tank and the pit latrines. These bricks are not only aesthetically pleasing and structurally superior, but they have tremendous environmental appeal.”

Five months later, St. Kizito Primary School re-opened its doors to the children of Gganda. BULA’s work was far from complete however. Fricke and Procopio returned to Uganda in January 2009 to supervise additions to the school, which included a kitchen, water tanks, water filters, shutters and textbooks. In addition, late in 2008, BULA developed a youth art exchange, titled Connecting Classrooms through Creativity, where American students are creating artwork to be displayed in BULA Schools and artwork by African students has in turn been displayed in American schools.

Additionally, Fricke spearheaded BULA’s second project, the improvement of a poorly run children’s home in Gganda. More recently, a fellowship program was created, allowing a recent college graduate to live at the children’s home and teach at St. Kizito Primary School.

As for the future, Fricke and her organization will look to continue doing what they can to help the children in Africa. BULA has selected its next school project, and is focused on branches out to the villages that neighbor Gganda to try and enhance the educational experience of those children. “The vision is to continue to build schools for those that are struggling,” Fricke said.


Also stumbled upon this:

Colin Sloand '09 spoke at Lehigh University's Expanding Financial Access in Africa conference on April 19, 2010. The first president of Lehigh's microfinance club, he launched his career in South Africa working for Mecene Investments studying the burgeoning African microfinance sector.



When Colin was at Lehigh, the Microfinance Club started a Lehigh Microcredit Fund, giving the university community the opportunity to make charitable donations to help the people of western Kenya. Donors received periodic updates on what their loans were being used for, repayment rates, and financial snapshots of the recipients and their communities.

The fund was developed through a partnership with Reach the Children, Inc., a non-profit organization operating in over a dozen countries throughout Africa. The group is seeking to alleviate poverty across the continent by focusing on such things as AIDS prevention, education, microenterprise, orphan care, and water and agriculture.


Another partnership at Lehigh ... saw this in a Lehigh alumni e-newsletter:

Lehigh and Caring for Cambodia, a nonprofit headquartered in Siem Reap, Cambodia (the gateway to Angkor Wat) have announced a 3 year partnership.

Caring for Cambodia gives Siem Reap children an opportunity to learn in seven safe, well-equipped schools. Using UNICEF’s “Child Friendly” school concept, children not only earn a quality education, but life skills as well. They serve 66,500 Food for Thought lunches monthly, have handed out 15,000 toothbrushes to encourage personal hygiene, and have purchased more than 1,250 bicycles to help their students get to school.

The partnership with Lehigh will give the students of Lehigh's College of Education's Comparative and International Education program the opportunity to conduct ongoing field work in Siem Reap, where they will work with the NGO on teacher training, curriculum development, and community outreach initiatives.

And though the new three-year program is tied to the College of Education, there likely will be cross-disciplinary opportunities for Iveta Silova, the Frank Hook Assistant Professor, and her team to partner with other programs across Lehigh to assist with local economic assessments, job market surveys, micro-finance opportunities, and other initiatives.

Lehigh will hire a professor of practice to manage the relationship. The College of Education has already hired a new graduate assistant, Harry Morra, to help with the transition.

Reflecting Back. my "AH HA" moment.

On January 7, 2008 I somehow stumbled upon this New York Times Op-Ed "The Age of Ambition" by Nicholas Kristof.

Here are three excerpts:

... With the [2008] American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics.

But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves. These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum (not only because they’re half the age of everyone else).

... Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry.

... So as we follow the [2008] presidential campaign, let’s not forget that the winner isn’t the only one who will shape the world. Only one person can become president of the United States, but there’s no limit to the number of social entrepreneurs who can make this planet a better place.

10 Free Things Every New Social Entrepreneur Should Have

Thanks to whomever shared this list on Twitter today - can't remember who it was!

10 Free Things Every New Social Entrepreneur Should Have
Published February 12th, Stanford Social Innovation Review
by Halle Tecco

Halle Tecco is a San Francisco resident and social entrepreneur passionate about technology, service and healthy living. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Yoga Bear, a non-profit providing more opportunities of health and wellness to cancer patients through the practice of yoga. Halle has worked as a Product Manager at various consumer-internet startups, including Enternships.com and Kiva.org. She also serves as an advisor to GreatNonprofits.org. She is pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School and will graduate in 2011.

Interview with Halle regarding Yoga Bear -

Help BusinessWeek Find America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs

On February 9th BusinessWeek launched their second annual search for the most promising social entrepreneurs in the U.S.

We want to find entrepreneurs who are building profitable business models in which doing good is an intrinsic part of the business and not just a philanthropic sideline. Concepts are great, but for this roundup we just want to hear about companies that are up and running and willing to disclose annual revenues.

So we’re asking readers for suggestions of for-profit companies based in the U.S. doing business here or abroad that meet these criteria. Go here to make a suggestion.

When our call for suggestions ends on March 26, we’ll sift through them and narrow the selection down to 25 finalists. Then we’ll profile each and ask you to vote for the company you feel holds the most promise, from May 4 to May 21. On June 1, we’ll announce the top five vote-getters.

Another Conference for Big Thinkers :: Momentum

Momentum 2009 brought together a group of 300 dynamic participants comprised of forward-thinking activists, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs. The issues that face society today defy simple solutions. Only by understanding how our issues and work are interconnected can we hope to create the change that is needed for a healthy, just and vibrant world.

Momentum is more than a conference – it is a creative space, an opportunity for connection, and a place where boundaries are broken and bridges are built. At Momentum, the best new thinking provokes conversation, invites debate, and inspires leaders to view their work through new lenses all the while forging dynamic new relationships.

It's organized by Tides.

Yay! You can watch videos of 2008 and 2009 Momentum conference presentations here.

For example, here's Jessy Tolkan's September 9, 2009 presentation - Executive Director of the Energy Action Coalition.


The Momentum 2010 details have not been announced yet, so join their email list to get the updates.

SOCAP10 :: Social Entrepreneurship Conference

I hope to make it to this conference this year - Social Capital Markets (SOCAP10.)

Check out last year's program. SUPER exciting stuff!

This video interview with co-founder Kevin Jones is about last year's conference.



Check out their blog here.

The conference organizers are accepting applications for interns. Positions begin Feb 1, 2010 and are based at The Hub in Berkeley, CA.

Program & Funding Opportunity for Social Entrepreneurs

If you have a business idea to help improve the world, West Coast Venture Capital wants to hear about it.

West Coast Village Capital is seeking social entrepreneurs with bright ideas and sustainable business models. Inspired by the village bank model used in microfinance, Village Capital is an innovative investment model built on the hypothesis that entrepreneurs, working intimately together and providing peer support to one another, will be able to efficiently and wisely allocate investment to one another’s companies.

West Coast Village Capital is a 12-week program in which social entrepreneurs will work together to strengthen their businesses and identify those most ready for seed investments of $25,000+ from First Light Ventures. The program is based in the Bay Area (at the Hub Berkeley) and will run January 19 through April 14, 2010 (including several all-group sessions and a weekly small-group meeting).

Applicants sought will be developing businesses designed to have positive social impact, using sustainable business models. They may be at the idea or startup stage. First Light Ventures will make investments - not grants - to selected businesses. To receive funding, a business must be incorporated as a C-corporation or LLC by March 31, 2010.

Applications are due by January 7, 2010. More information is available here. Also check out this blog post from the Hub. And this blog post from one of my favorite blogs, Change.org's Social Entrepreneurship blog.

I found out about this opportunity from the very awesome group Young Women Social Entrepreneurs San Francisco. Their holiday party is this Sunday in the Mission District of San Francisco! Details here.