Dowser - Uncovering Stories of Change

Search for the hashtag #socent and you'll find wide-ranging interest in social entrepreneurship on Twitter. Here's a roundup of a few thought-provoking tweets from the last week:

Social media news blog Mashable (@mashable) informed us about this brash new website that had flown under our radar for its first month in business. MyDunkTank is a new crowdfunding venture with a saucy new model for soliciting donations. Read more

All around us, people are working on innovative solutions to pressing social problems. Often, though, those stories can be difficult to track down. Which is why we’re regularly scouring the Web to highlight who’s solving what and how. Read more

Yesterday I wrote a post about the "creativity crisis" recently reported by Newsweek. Over the past 20 years, American children have steadily lost ground on a long-standing creativity assessment that's strongly associated with entrepreneurship and invention. This is a serious problem.

I've spent the past 20 years interviewing social entrepreneurs in different countries and fields—and if there's one quality they all have in common, it's creativity. Not a specific talent like a flair for painting or writing poetry, but a generalizable kind of creativity that can be applied to many types of problems. Read more

If you're interested in children, education, social innovation, or, for that matter, the future of America, Newsweek's recent cover story on the "creativity crisis" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is a must read. It makes a powerful argument that our system of education, and perhaps our way of life, are diminishing children's imaginative capacities.

Since 1990, measures of creativity among children from kindergarten through sixth grade have steadily declined—and the decrease is significant. This doesn't just mean we'll be producing fewer painters and pianists; it means we'll be producing fewer problem solvers and changemakers of all kinds. Creativity is defined as the ability to produce something "original and useful." And one way it's measured is by asking children questions about specific problems—how to improve a toy truck, for example—and seeing how many unique ideas they come up with and how they combine them. Children who come up with a lot of ideas are more likely to become entrepreneurs, inventors, authors, software developers, and so forth. Read more

Kim Scheinberg has a habit she can't seem to kick: investing in social entrepreneurs who have business ideas to change the world. The problem is she doesn't enjoy haggling over percentage points when she's dealing with start-up entrepreneurs who are desperate for cash and trying to do good. To get around the problem, she and her friend, Rafe Furst, have created a new pay-it-forward fund: Presumed Abundance, which makes early investments in social ventures. The key difference is that all the profits generated by the fund must be reinvested in other social enterprises.

The most intriguing part is that Scheinberg and Furst take a backseat role and encourage the business entrepreneurs themselves to choose whose dream gets funded next. Thus, their partnership in social change may continue long after their original business deal. Here, Scheinberg explains how creating long-term relationships makes investing more enjoyable and holds the promise for launching many more social entrepreneurs. Read more

Search for the hashtag #socent and you'll find wide-ranging interest in social entrepreneurship on Twitter. Here's a roundup of a few thought-provoking tweets from the last week:

Google (@google) announced this week that it's purchasing 20 years’ worth of wind energy to power a number of data centers. Google estimates that it will save money through the deal. But the benefits don't end there; their long-term support of the Iowa wind farm will allow scientists there to try new renewable energy experiments. Google’s quest to become fully carbon neutral is highly ambitious -- and worth watching closely. Read more

Everywhere, people are working on innovative solutions to pressing social problems. Often, though, those stories can be difficult to track down. Which is why we’re scouring the Web to bring you weekly links highlighting who’s solving what and how.

Soap Operas for... Global Health?

• TV is a dubious force. It can trivialize life or expand awareness of crucial issues. From the UN-backed “Under the Sky,” a soap opera designed to help Haitians learn about hygienic steps, to the drama-packed education offered by such shows as "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Treme," to a new initiative that attempts to educate Americans about global health disparities on primetime TV, we’re seeing more creative minds focusing on how to enlighten as well as entertain. (World Changing: “Impactful Media: How TV is Shifting the Global Landscape for Good”) Read more

Elmira Bayrasli and her colleagues are always on the lookout for the up-and-coming Bill Gateses and Steve Jobses of developing countries. She handles policy and outreach for Endeavor, a New York-based organization that supports high-impact for-profit entrepreneurs in emerging markets—the enterprising men and women with the potential to create jobs and grow markets in their countries. Endeavor's model assumes that what these nations lack is not entrepreneurial talent, but an entrepreneurial culture—a supportive ecosystem of institutions, networks, and norms to help start-ups achieve their full potential. By nurturing these supports, Endeavor hopes to spur economic growth for the benefit of these societies as a whole.

Bayrasli talked with us recently about the Endeavor approach and how she came to see entrepreneurship as a key to social change. Read more

Who made the shirt you're wearing? Were the cloth cutters or seamstresses treated fairly? Did the factory comply with reasonable environmental standards? If you have no clue, then check out the work of Alice Tepper Marlin. She believes we all have a right to know about the impact our choices have on the world. And she has created an organization to make it possible.

President and founder of Social Accountability International and dubbed the “architect of corporate responsibility” for her work dating back to the 1960s, Marlin has spent the past decade spearheading SA8000, the first universal social accountability certification for manufacturers. The voluntary standard has become the benchmark for socially responsible business practices. Today, 1.2 million workers are employed in SA8000-certified factories and farms throughout five continents.

Dowser talked with Marlin about the challenges and opportunities for creating a more socially responsible global economy.

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Summer. For some kids, it means freedom, swimming, endless days and lasting memories; sadly, for many it can also mean falling far behind at school. Researchers call it "summer learning loss," and while it touches students at all grade and income levels, its effects are dramatic among the poorest: starved for learning opportunities from July to September, low-income students lose about three months' worth of reading and math skills. Each fall, they start the school year playing catch-up. Some scholars estimate that two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic achievement gap between low- and middle-income students can be explained by the differences in their summer experiences during elementary school (PDF). Read more