Social entrepreneurs promote social innovation in areas including health, environment, education, poverty alleviation, inclusion, justice and human rights. They do this by applying business clout together with a focus on social and ecological values, by being creative, and by having the courage to try new approaches. The Schwab Foundation annual award recognises and promotes the work of social entrepreneurs worldwide. This year, they have picked 13 organisations who have been applying their ingenuity to solve some of the most pressing issues of our times.
At RESET we like to report on clever initiatives that bring about positive change, and help solve social, economic and environmental problems. Here we report on a pick of 13 social enterprises who have made it to the Schwab Foundation 2017 Social Enterprise Award. They span fields such as healthcare, justice and human rights, entrepreneurship, education and technology, biometrics, financial inclusion, food and agriculture, infrastructure and of course, environment.
Healthcare
The Aman Foundation offers affordable community health programs in Pakistani cities, with a focus on family planning, reproductive and child health. It supports some 1 million people each year, over 100,000 of whom are helped through its ambulance service alone. The Aman Foundation uses seed capital to incubate social enterprises, and works with governments and external funders to scale them.
Last Mile Health seeks to deliver primary health services to over one million people living in remote communities in Liberia. Partnerships with health organisations and governments are key in its aim to develop a national networks of community health practitioners. To date, it has been able to deliver primary healthcare to some 50,000 people living in some 300 remote communities.
Medical Technology and Transfer Service (MTTS), designs, produces and sells medical devices to prevent neonatal mortality in low-income countries. Some 75% of infant deaths are indeed preventable. Its LifeKit includes machines for respiratory distress syndrome, radiant warmers for hypothermia and photo-therapy devices for jaundice. MTTS products have been used in 350 hospitals in 25 countries, and have treated almost half a million babies. And the supportive services also provided, have helped some 1.3 million babies.
Zipline uses drones (Zips) to deliver medical supplies, vaccines and blood. Currently deployed in Rwanda, one fleet of Zips is reaching some 20 hospitals and health centres there, giving millions of people access to medical supplies.
Inclusion
Livox is a smartphone and tablet software application that facilitates communication and learning for people with disabilities. Through clever algorithms, the app interprets the users’ movements, and through its Visual Smart Keyboard words or sentences can be pronounced. The customizable app allows the creation of educational content, and can teach users to read, write and understand complex concepts. Livox has won a number of awards, including the 2015 Best Inclusion App Award by the UN.
Fundacion Capital promotes financial inclusion and economic citizenship through giving people living in extreme poverty access to financial tools, skills, technology and digital solutions “supporting them in defining their own path out of poverty.” Its user-centred approach and close work with local governments ensure the development of initiatives that are relevant to the people it seeks to support. Through it, over 5 million people in 17 Latin American and African countries have been able to define their own path out of poverty.
Technology
Conflict, poverty, environmental disasters are the main causes why people decide to leave their country. In the often turbulent journeys that ensue, some of those fleeing will just disappear. REFUNITE is a tracing platform designed to help family members search for their missing loved ones. Operational in Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Pakistan, Somaliland, Somalia, Liberia, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Niger, Ghana, Nigeria, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, the platform is free of charge, and accessible via any basic phone. To date, it has helped reconnect more than 38,000 family members.
Simprints is non-profit that seeks that uses biometrics for development. Through an open-source software and biometric technology (such as fingerprint scanners for frontline workers) it helps researchers, NGOs and governments fight poverty around the world, by enabling them to accurately track projects achievements in some of the toughest settings. Simprints helps track programs’ outcomes within areas including health, microfinance, aid distribution, and education.
Food & Agriculture
The Kitchen‘s aim is quite simply access to real food for everyone in the USA. It does this by: promoting restaurants’ sourcing of food direct from farmers, at affordable prices for end customers; a network of outdoor Learning Gardens delivering real food education in schools in disadvantaged areas; supporting indoor vertical farming enterprises and a new generation of real food entrepreneurs to help them opt out of the industrial food system.
Infrastructure
Water for People wants to bring safe water and sanitation to each family, school, clinic in Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, India, thereby making safe drinking water and sanitation accessible to all. It does this by building wells, installing toilets, setting up pumps, and by partnering with local institutions, and communities to ensure that change is sustainable in the long term. Thanks to Water for People, some four million people in these countries have now access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Environment
COMACO (Community Markets for Conservation) seeks to improve farms productivity and diversify farmers’ income opportunities, through conservation and wildlife preservation efforts. For example, it buys surplus harvest from farmers, to be processed, packaged and sold as consumer products (e.g. rice, honey) under its premium brand It’s Wild! To date, COMACO counts some 40,000 registered farmers in Zambia.
Justice and Human Rights
Namati helps people in Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Kenya, Liberia, Myanmar, Uganda, Bangladesh and India to understand and shape the laws that affect them. Through a network of community paralegals and grassroots groups, Namati seeks to protect community lands, rights to healthcare and citizenship, as well as enforce environmental laws, while ensuring that the people affected are fully aware of, and involved in, the legal processes that affect them.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs Associates (EA) promotes and supports entrepreneurship as the key out of poverty and dependence on government jobs, as well as a peace-building tool, in the disadvantaged and politically unstable region of Nagaland, India. Through intensive business skills training, mentoring, networking opportunities, and financial linkages, EA motivates and supports local youths to take control over local resources and to use them to generate employment, income and economic growth. Partnerships with local stakeholders have been key in helping EA create some 17,000 jobs in the area to date.
To find out more about each individual organisation, head to the Schwab Foundation’s website. And here’s a short video from them:
