Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008
Time: 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Location: Faunce 201
There will be FREE FOOOOOOOOOOOD

This kickoff is to more formally introduce social entrepreneurship on Brown’s campus and the exciting mysteries in the works for next year, the agenda is:

1. Introduction to SE on campus by Alan Harlem, Director of Social Entrepreneurship

2. Quick session on skill building, key resources to encourage SE @ Brown you should be taking advantage of (fellowships, grants, mentoring & more)

3. Brief presentations by our very own rockstar student entrepreneurs

4. Presentation by Brown GISP that has been designing a network of social entrepreneurship alumni

5. Brown Social Enterprise Club

****FREE Antonio’s PIZZA & Meeting Street COOKIES*****

Come. Bring friends.

May 10, 2008

“4 hours. 24 Films. A new way to see the world.”

Using the power of media to mobilize social change on a global level. Check out how you can participate!

New York Times Magazine’s environmental issue. Includes profiles, steps to conserve, and cool ideas!

Check it out here!

Spend an afternoon with Paul Polack, Founder of International Development Enterprises and Expert on Sustainable Economic Development

Thursday, April 3 (TOMORROW)
4:00PM
Barus and Holly room 751

Paul is the founder of IDE (International Development Enterprises) and an expert on sustainable economic development. In his new book, Out of Poverty – What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail, this impassioned and iconoclastic author, entrepreneur, inventor and self-identified “troublemaker,” tells why mainstream poverty eradication programs have fallen so sadly short and how he and his organization developed an alternative approach that has already succeeded in lifting 17 million people out of poverty.

“If we learn to listen to poor people, understand the
specific contexts in which they live and operate, and
find ways to harness their entrepreneurial energy
to increase their income, I have no doubt that at
least 500 million families now surviving on less than
a dollar a day will find practical ways to end their
poverty within one generation.”
PAUL POLAK, OUT OF POVERTY

Sponsored by the Division of Engineering, Program in Commerce, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship and the Swearer Center for Public Service

Want to work with a nonprofit on a strategic level?
Want to learn more about the unique challenges nonprofits face and strategies that have been used to overcome them?
Want to learn about how consulting methods and tools can help make social sector organizations more effective?

New Sector Alliance is a nonprofit leadership development and consulting firm in Boston. New Sector works with other nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and consulting firms, to structure substantive, meaningful strategic planning projects and equip talented young leaders to complete them.

New Sector’s Residency in Social Enterprise Program is for recent college graduates and professionals with 1-3 years of work experience. Through this program, Residents help a nonprofit organization measure its impact, improve its operating practices or broaden its reach. At the same time, they join a class of like-minded, committed individuals to participate in various workshops and training events designed to foster their own professional development. People who join New Sector develop leadership and management skills that cut across sectors while they explore the ways they can positively impact their community.

The upcoming deadline for the RISE program is this Friday, March 28^th. Please send your application, a resume and cover letter, to Eileen Yang at rise@newsector.org. Guidelines for the statement of interest can be found at http://www.newsector.org/services/students/bachelors.php.

Please check out New Sector’s website: www.newsector.org for additional information. Also, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Dr. Kate Zhou, University of Hawaii, runs an organzation called Education Advancement Fund International (EAFI) that matches volunteer teachers of all ages with teaching opportunities of 2 weeks-1 year, particularly in underserved minority regions in southeastern China. Dr. Zhou is also looking for individuals with business experience to teach entrepreneurship and help devise business plans for empowering rural villages.

For more information, please see www.yifei.org.

Dr. Zhou can be contacted at:
Honolulu Main Office:
3356 Francis Street
Honolulu, HI 96815
USA
Tel: 808-7544652
fax: 808-9566877
email:katezhou[at]yifei[dot]org

Lessons in Social Enterpise
Date: Tuesday, March 18
Time: 4-5:20
Location: MacMillan 115

Venkatesh (Venky) Raghavendra is currently the Chief Philanthropy Officer of the American India Foundation (www.aif.org) and works out of AIF’s New York office. He will share best practices in the social entrepreneurship field, drawing upon case studies from South Asia.

Prior to joining AIF Venky worked in Washington DC with the global citizen sector organization “Ashoka: Innovators for the Public”. While at Ashoka Venky promoted social entrepreneurship in India and several other Asian countries. He engaged leading business entrepreneurs in the U.S. to invest in social entrepreneurs and their innovations as Director for Global Partnerships with Asia. Earlier, in the late 80s and early 90s Venky co-founded an organization in the rainforests of South India to create livelihood opportunities for indigenous communities through eco-tourism and adventure-tourism. Through activities such as hiking, canoeing & rock-climbing Venky was able to build awareness about the rich but fragile ecosystem of the Western Ghats of South India. He played an active role in replicating this new paradigm of community-owned eco-tourism enterprises across the country.

(Co-Sponsored by Brown South Asian Students Association)

We would like to inform them that the application deadline for conference delegates has been extended to Sunday, March 9th, 2008. We’re also happy to share that our speakers this year include Nicholas Kistof and Mark Haris.

All the best,
Elizabeth Nielsen and Gauthami Soma
Co-Chairs
Northwestern University Conference on Human Rights

________________________________________________

“Globalization and the Universality of Human Rights”

April 10-13, 2008

The fifth annual Northwestern University Conference on Human Rights (NUCHR) is a national student conference on “Globalization and the Universality of Human Rights,” which will take place on Northwestern’s Evanston campus on April 10-13, 2006. The Conference will examine the impact of globalizing forces on the tension between cultural relativism and the universality of human rights in four key areas: cultural and religious tensions, multinational corporations, international justice, and health. NUCHR will provide the funding to bring talented undergraduate student leaders and activists from colleges across the country to attend a three-day summit. Students will interact with distinguished speakers and panelists, comprised of top academics, activists, and policy-makers in the field.

As the largest student-organized and student-attended human rights conference in the United States, the conference is dedicated to fostering social activism and raising awareness of international human rights issues by uniting student leaders from across the country with renowned activists, academics, and policy makers over a three day summit. In the past, the conference has focused on issues such as American interventionist policy, American policy towards HIV and AIDS in the developing world, human trafficking, and torture. We have featured distinguished speakers such as Romeo Dallaire, Richard Holbrooke, Bernard Kouschner, Stephen Lewis, John Miller, and Cherif Bassiouni.

NUCHR views social entrepreneurship as a fundamental component of our goals. We consider critical thinking and social entrepreneurship as two parts of a singular process. Our conference begins by informing students of the complexities in various human rights issues. By engaging with distinguished professionals in the field, students will gain the foresight for the second component — social entrepreneurship. On a tangible level, on the third day of the conference we hope to have a break-out session, tentatively referred to as “Challenges to Solutions” in which young social entrepreneurs in each of the four areas will be featured. Finally, Mark Hanis, will be closing the conference!

To apply to attend the Conference as a student delegate (including funding for travel and housing expenses) and for more information on NUCHR, please visit our website: http://www.cics.northwestern.edu/NUCHRweb/index.html . Applications are due on March 9, 2008.

If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact the co-chairs of this year’s conference, Elizabeth Nielsen and Gauthami Soma, via e-mail conferenceonhumanrights@u.northwestern.edu or phone 612.695.7944.

Are you staying in Providence this summer?

Check out The Institute for Humane Studies’ FREE week-long workshop on SOCIAL CHANGE. It takes place at Brown University (so convenient!) from June 21 to 27.

The lectures at the Workshop touch on both methodological and substantive aspects of some of today’s most pressing and difficult questions. Is social justice at odds with economic efficiency? Is institutional structure the key to prosperity? How does the study of cognition shape our understanding of interpersonal relations in society? Can we apply insights from cognitive science to design institutions that will optimize human well-being? Should evolutionary psychology change the way we do moral theory, economics, political science, and law?

More information is located here: http://www.theihs.org/seminars/id.848/default.asp