In this episode of the Impact Podcast,  Innov8social founder speaks to organizers at the Amani Institute including co-founder Roshan Paul and Communications & Community Director Geraldine Hepp. The Amani institute acts a bridge to bind the gap between higher education and employment marketplace. They help to prepare a new generation of leaders, to tackle the world’s toughest problems.

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Meet Roshan

Roshan was born and brought up in India, he moved to the US, for his undergraduate studies. He graduated in 2001, and it coincidentally met with the 9/11. Soon after his studies, Roshan landed in a consulting job with a big company in the US. But after looking at 9/11 attack and the Hindu- Muslim violence back in India, Roshan went back to India to become a social entrepreneur.  He travelled around the world, working with 300-400 social entrepreneurs. While working with them, Roshan understood that it was not funding, but rather finding right talent was a main problem for all these social entrepreneurs.

At the same time, Roshan found that a lot of students who were graduating wanted to work in a job that provides, social impact. But at the same time, the graduates were missing some required talent, hence were not landing in their dream job spots, and hence Amani was born.

Meet Geraldine

Geraldine joined Amani institute after working as an Intern in education sector. She did not want to join the development sector, as it was not in line with goals that she has set as a teenager. She wanted to join the education sector, and through one of her friends heard about Amani institute. Geraldine felt this option to be great, as it helps her to look at the social enterprise sector from a different perspective. Geraldine felt that through education, she would be able to change the problem that see saw with development sector. She feels that the sector needs the best minds to solve the problems of the 21st century.

Geraldine feels that just having good intentions and passion might not suffice,  but they should also be willing to second guess things. So Amani helps these professionals to fine tune their skills, so that they can fit into the social sector quite easily. She joined Amani in 2013 from Kenya.

Amani Institute – Activities

At Amani institute, Roshan and team has created a master equivalent program in Social Innovation Management. They launched their first class in Kenya. Currently Amani is running their fifth class in kenya and their second class in Brazil. The Amani institute is also approached by a lot institutes, social enterprises and companies, to come in and do customized programs for capacity planning. At Amani, they have also started to work with universities, to align their courses to the marketplace, and to arrange trainings for their faculties. Those are the three main streams that Amani is working on right now.

Amani has trained around 130 fellows, from around 35 countries mainly from Africa, Latin America and Europe.  What is common among them in their quest is to find meaning in their life and career. They want to create an impact. The common fellows of Amani are the people, who want to move from private sector to a social enterprise space. The second group are the ones, who come directly from the university and have interest in social sector. The teams at Amani are incredibly diverse, and have people from IKEA and Coca Cola  who are interested in social space.

Amani Institute – Certificate in Social Innovation Management

The main program for individuals is the “Certificate in Social innovation management”, it is an online course and it has an immersion phase in Nairobi or Sao Paulo for four months.

It starts with an online foundation month, where people connect online and discuss content based things about social innovation. As there is high diversity of fellows, there is a lot of talent that comes to the table. Geraldine feels that a lot more intrapreneurs needs to come up so that all the amazing ideas brought forward by social entrepreneurs can be taken to the next level.

After that the foundation month, the immersion program allows the fellows to join as an apprentice in any of their choice of social enterprise and learn things on the job. This forms one of the pillars of the immersion phase. The second pillar is to learn the skill required using a professional skill workshop, apart from the daily work. The third pillar is the leadership track, which is called the inner journey of the change maker.  This phase focuses on the inner qualities of the change maker.

After the immersion phase, the acceleration phase kicks in, and that spans for five months. During these five months the participants will get to focus on finding mentors, maintaining relationship with the mentor, building peer networks and skills that participants wants to hone . There are two intakes for these programs one is in February and the other in July.

Geraldine has a piece of advice for all aspiring social entrepreneurs and that is to do job that you love. She pulls out the three circles of hedgehog concept which is

1. “What are you passionate about or what give you joy ?”

2. “What is it that you can do the best ?”

3. “What drives the economic engine ?”

Geraldine wants to add a fourth circle “4. What does the world needs from you ?”

To Learn more about Amani institute and about their team, please visit below.

Show Notes

Website : http://amaniinstitute.org/

Twitter : @amaniinst

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/theamaniinstitute

In this episode of the Impact Podcast,  we travel to Brazil and talk to Nastassia Romano, who has worked on a number of projects related to social enterprise. In this podcast, we will get to hear about how her work and education has led to her current role in Yunus Social Business. We will also get to know her perspectives about social enterprise in Brazil.

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Meet Nastassia Romano

Nastassia is an economist, she did her graduation in Brazil. She has studied in the London School of Economics, where she specialized in international studies & environmental studies. While studying, she had an opportunity to go to Oxford in 2010, for a conference at the Saïd Business school. In that conference Nastassia was able hear about social enterprise like she never did before.

So after coming back to Brazil, Nastassia did some research and after talking to lot of people decided that, she had to first start working in a social impact. She eventually ended up working as project manager, in Brazil, to select and train non profit social organizations in business and management that creates an impact.

Social Impact in Brazil

Nastassia reveals that social enterprise or social impact, is a novel concept in Brazil when she started. She feels that with type of inequality issues in Brazil, there is a need to do something on your own rather than relying on government. But some of these already existing social enterprises in Brazil were lacking a business acumen, hence they were struggling to kick start. She feels that strategic management, is something that needs to be brought in to solve these issues.

Association with Yunus Social Business

While working with Social Institute, Nastassia did some research about social enterprise and developed contacts by talking to people. It is during this time, she found out that Yunus is coming to South Brazil for a conference. She wanted to work along with the Yunus foundation. She travelled São Paulo, to figure out what they were doing and to connect on how they can partner, to do projects. On one occasion she went to a social finance seminar, about impact investing and had the opportunity to talk to the CEO of Yunus through her connections.

Nastassia spoke with members from Yunus and explained that,  Yunus education strategies had a lot of synergy with what they are doing in South Brazil. She also explained that if they have to start anything, related to social enterprise education it should start from South Brazil, as people in Sao Paulo already has access to those. She has also invited Yunus to talk about their business models at higher education event. Eventually Nastassia, became a part of Yunus representing Parana state.

Nastassia feels that a social enterprise as company should focus on making profits, and thereby creating a social impact. The profit earned should go back to the enterprise, to strengthen the impact it is creating rather than producing dividends for the owners. With Yunus Social business, Nastassia is helping to organize workshops, speeches, academic events that create this new type of social impact mindset. In Brazil, private companies does not trust NGO as funding gets deviated hence Nastassia is working primarily on the mindset change across companies. YSB also runs an accelerator in Rio and Sao Paulo to help develop more social entrepreneurs by helping new businesses. YSB also does academic work related to social enterprise  with the universities. To learn more about YSB, please connect below.

Learn More

Website :  http://www.yunusnegociossociais.com/

Email:      nastassia@yunusnegociossociais.com

Twitter : @yunusns

In this episode of the Impact Podcast, Innov8social founder explains about a new fellowship program called ” Global Good Fund ” and you will hear about details of the program. We are joining with Jose Fernandez in this episode, and we will hear more about the Global Good Fund.

Listen to the Jose Fernandez, from the Global Good Fund

Meet Jose Fernandez

Jose has a business background with an MBA degree from Spain. Jose has travelled to various countries for working in, banking, cosmetics industries.  He was working with consulate general of Spain in New York. In New York, he was introduced to social entrepreneurship and got connected with Global Good Fund. Jose was amazed at how social enterprises were able to bridge the gap between traditional non-profits and traditional businesses. He was also worried about the vulnerabilities of the traditional non-profits who were relying on funds and grants. Jose felt that non-profits also should have good revenue generating models. Once Jose was introduced social enterprise, he felt that he found the missing part of traditional business, which is social responsibility.

Neetal was asking Jose about connection between politics and social enterprise. Jose explained that when you start a political party, you mentality will be to help people. It is very similar to social enterprise, where they dive into a worthy cause and try to make an impact. In social enterprise you try to make connections, which helps to create synergy. But he felt the execution of social enterprise is vastly different from political system, and media plays a major role in politics.

Global Good Fund

Jose spoke about a currently open fellowship called Diana Davis Spencer Foundation Fellowship.  It is a fellowship that focuses on nurturing unemployed or underemployed people who are  older than 50 years or more in the united states. The fellowship program runs for 15 months and pair them with mentors and guide them with professional coaches to become a leader. The applicant can be of any nationality and should be fifty years and older.  There is global good fund summit is happening in April and the participants will get to meet their mentors.  The deadline for the fellowship application is 26th September 2016. Please refer to the “Apply” page of  globalgoodfund.org.

Learn More

Website :  http://www.globalgoodfund.org/

Twitter Handle : @GlobalGoodFund

In this episode of the Impact Podcast, Innov8social founder shares her view, that any social enterprise journey has multiple phases or chapters, but somehow no two stories, end up to be the same. But  the key thing is to follow the purpose and believing in the solution for the problem. We are going to meet someone who embodies this thought in his social enterprise. In this episode, we will meet Gregor Ruthven.

Listen to the Gregor Ruthven

Meet Gregor – Social Entrepreneur Behind REACH, Text-Response App for Vital Services

Gregor came with this idea while working as an intern in college. He found that people who involved in civil cases found it really difficult to connect with social services. The services though they existed, people didn’t know how to connect with them or find the right one. Gregor found that, there should be a better way  to find and connect with social services.

So after Gregor, moved to SFO he met the Innov8social founder and pitched idea of texting service at the “Tech for Good” event. The idea is to built a text messaging service, that automatically connects to right social service in the area.

There was an existing service 211 provided by united way, it is like 911 but for non-emergency. It connects people to social services. This service can be accessed by any American. But the problem is that lot of people don’t even know, it existed. The second problem with that was, it was not only inefficient as it relies only on phone calls but there is no information saved. Not only it sent the people to wrong services, it has no capacity to store information as well.

Gregor Strategy

Gregor explained, that they had done a good amount of market research. He spoke to a couple of 211 operators at Atlanta and some others across the country. The 211 at Atlanta was excited about the text message service and the automation that comes along with it. Though there were potential buyers for the solution, the investors are not turned on with the idea, as the target market is small.

Gregor is more of a strategist and marketer, than a developer and having a team meant a lot of chaos for him. One of the initial founders of this project left in the middle. He found that having a few developers in the team meant a lot as it gave him the idea from cost perspective.

Gregor also understood the importance of coming with minimal version, of the tool rather than full version. He understood this, while giving his pitch at the Draper university, where he failed to connect with the audience as the pitch was complex. So they developed a simple dashboard with couple of screens for the operators to login. He also learnt how move forward in the face of failure, while developing this tool. He also felt that, the timing is an important factor for such ideas and having a good team means a lot.

Way to go

Gregor does these impact activities as a part time job, while working full time as a digital strategist for SVP worldwide. Gregor feels that having a full time job, really helps to keep the impact activities going even if there are delays in the project completion and helps to avoid financial crunches.

Gregor’s next big ask would be to figure out a way get jobs to the homeless people. You learn more about Gregor and his work from the below section. Gregor feels that timing is the key thing while implementing new ideas. He firmly believes nothing can happen over night and he strongly believes in partnerships.

Learn More

• www.reachtext.co
• www.meetgregor.com
• Article about: Nonprofits and App Developers Combine Forces for Community Change