Voices from the Skoll World Forum
A report from the opening plenary at the Skoll World Forum, featuring Paul Farmer.
Poverty
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The Information Age Goes Old School
Is the digital divide a thing of the past?
Podcast
Madhu Sridhar - A Social Enterprise to Reduce Hunger in India
Akshaya Patra USA is an innovative social enterprise, a food program that is changing the face of education in India. In this audio interview with Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman, President and CEO Madhu Sridhar talks about how the enterprise grew from a small organization to a massive, well-run entity. She discusses its noble goals and its strategically oriented approaches to meeting high-volume demand at low cost.
All Entrepreneurship Is Social
Let’s not overlook what traditional entrepreneurs contribute to society.
Podcast
Paul Rice - Promoting Fair Trade as Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship may be the most promising avenue for solving global problems, says Paul Rice, CEO of TransFair USA. In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Rice details his own work to establish Fair Trade. The movement has opened the U.S. market to more than 1.4 million small family farmers around the world who are now getting a fair price for their harvests and making dramatic gains in their living standards.
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Design Thinking for Social Innovation
By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.
The Problem With Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.
Microfinance Misses Its Mark
Despite the hoopla over microfinance, it doesn't cure poverty. But stable jobs do. If societies are serious about helping the poorest of the poor, they should stop investing in microfinance and start supporting large, labor-intensive industries.
In Microfinance, Clients Must Come First
Few microfinance institutions articulate what, exactly, their ultimate goals are and how to achieve them. If the goal of microfinance is to alleviate poverty, the authors say, then MFIs should focus on helping their clients build successful enterprises, rather than on making more and bigger loans.
Romanticizing the Poor
Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful.