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Listen to the Interview with Franco Silva

Meet Franco Silva

What happens when you are an athletic, driven college student headed toward medical school and you meet an unexpected Franco Silvalifeevent that changes your future. Franco Silva, Founder, CEO of Kizazi (and avid soccer fan) met that situation. Listen to how Franco reconciled a profound shift in his life with an inner desire to create impact to launch his social enterprise. Kizazi is a brand designed to mobilize soccer’s 3.5 billion fans to fight poverty on a global scale.

Franco is a recent graduate who spent much of his college career focusing on and preparing for a path in medicine, with an eye at surgery. However, when a life event shifted his path, both externally and internally, he turned to of his driving forces: creating impact and the game of soccer to launch a new startup called Kizazi.  His mission, and that of his company is to leverage the reach, traction, and power of soccer to fight poverty.

Kizazi is currently raising funds on Indiegogo to manufacture and distribute specialty soccer balls that are not only FIFA-certified but have also secured a FairTrade certification. With every purchase of a Kizazi Ball, and any future Kizazi product, the company plans to put a portion of the profits into the Kizazi Fund–which will then make microloans to address the roots of poverty.

Find Out More

More About Franco Silva

 

More About Kizazi

  • Website: http://www.kizazi.com/
  • Value proposition: Kizazi is building a unique soccer brand that will enable the company to disperse globla microloans, to empower wealth creation through business and innovation, helping individuals raise themselves out of poverty.
  • Kizazi Video– “Explaining the concept of fighting poverty through  strategy and intelligence
  • The Kizazi Fund Explained, “The Key Is Intelligent Giving : This is what sets us apart
  • Article in Pinterest, – “Article on Kizazi Fund

 

Kizazi Campaign on Indiegogo

Listen to the Interview with Liberty Madison

Meet Liberty Madison

Liberty MadisonThis special episode of the Innov8social Podcast features an interview with Liberty Madison, a futurist, tech and media expert, and entrepreneur. Through her various lenses of experience and expertise we explore what it mean to be a millennial startup entrepreneur.  Liberty, who has also popularized her social media persona #ThatTechGirl, is a founder of multiple entrepreneurial endeavors and initiatives—with the overarching goal of furthering tech entrepreneurship among millennials.

Liberty has been featured on HuffingtonPost, ABC, CW, Perth Australia Tech and she co hosts SF New Tech, a monthly pitch session, in San Francisco.

As you’ll hear from the interview, Liberty has worked on initiatives such as a wearable tech apparel line called Python Ear Code and launched a startup hub for entrepreneurs in Oakland. When she interviewed Tim Draper, he affectionately called her the “Oprah of Silicon Valley.”

Liberty’s passion is translating tech to talk by introducing technology to the masses and removing barriers to entry. As she works to build tools, resources, and platforms for millennial entrepreneurs, we get to ask her about the shift in the mindset of millennials from creating traditional businesses to create mission-driven businesses.

 

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More About Liberty Madison

 

Why is Social Enterprise Gaining Traction Now?

Fourteen states have passed new laws that recognize new legal structures for social enterprise. Social enterprise could account for as much as 3-5% of the US GDP. Based on the first ever census for social enterprise, the for-good, for-profit entities have created over 14K jobs and generate of $300M in revenue. And those are the conservative numbers.

So, why now?

 

city at twilight
It’s the Millennials.

The millennials, born in the early 1980’s up to the early 2000’s, are coming of age now and may have something to do with the social enterprise boom. They are finishing up college and graduate school, entering the workforce, getting married, having kids, starting companies—and doing things in their own distinct style.

Generational research weaves fascinating narratives of trends of individuals over time. By looking at a stretch of years, historical context, lifestyle norms, economic trends, and other factors you can actually begin to paint broad brushstrokes of what defines a generation and see how that generation, in turn, impact the ones that follow.

In case you find yourself skeptical look at these descriptions of past generations, compiled by Auburn Mountain Consumer Education. They each tell a story about the values, attributes, and motivations of people born during a range of years.

The Lost Generation (1880’s-1900)
The Greatest Generation (1900-1920’s)
Silent Generation (1920’s-1941)
Baby Boomers (1940’s-1950’s)
Generation Jones (1950’s-1960’s)
Generation X (1960’s-1980’s)
Millenials (1980’s-2000’s)

6 Attributes that Make Millennials Prone to Social Enterprise

There are specific characteristics of millenials that make them suited for impact-oriented enterprise. Here are a few of the

1. Connected & Collaborative. Millennials are remarkably collaborative. If it’s not worth doing together, it’s not worth doing–seems to be the attitude. Collaborative consumption has seen a huge lift as millennials not only lead the way with new peer-to-peer sharing startups but also use them extensively.

2. Open to Change. Millennials are not as bound by tradition. Their lives have been marked by arrays of traditions, cultures, and religions that have been introduced to them not only by their family, but by neighbors, friends, and through social networks. In any year a person can celebrate numerous world traditions, eat at restaurants that represent far-trotten regions of the world, and share laugh, photos, and tweets with people who are completely different from themselves. They don’t process the world through a single lens, because they’ve only ever seen it through multiple ones.

3. Self-Assured, Confident.  The millennials have each other, and need your approval a lot less than you think. They are not afraid to take a leap of faith or two, even if it means leaving stable structures such as college, jobs, or relationships. They are compelled to satisfy their inner desires—whether to achieve fame/fortune, to create lasting impact, or to do something that has never been done before.

4. Special. Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers and Generation X-ers. They were raised with the belief that they could do anything and to not compromise on their passion. Some may say that this has created a sense of entitlement in millennials and an unwillingness to have their identities tied to a job or position; however, millennials will argue that they feel that they (and everyone else) should be able to customize a work-life balance.

5. Risk-Takers. Not only are millennials not generally averse to risk, they actually seem to embrace it. They have a track road of actively innovating and re-thinking they way things are done and are largely driving emerging fields such as the sharing economy, impact investing, social enterprise, and re-thinking legal structures and policy-making.

6. Witness to the Great Recession. An interesting feature of the millennials is that they have not only been witness to the Great Recession, but have been deeply impacted by its effects. Many have had difficulties in finding their early-career jobs, have had to move back into their homes, and/or have seen their parents become uncertain about their retirement or future. The collapse of the financial system and market economy has taught millennials to be lean and to question the status quo for traditional structures for finance, economy, and medicine.

These features, taken together, give robust support as to why social enterprise and law/policy supporting social entrepreneurs has taken hold at this precise moment in time. Though a number of other factors play into the growth of social enterprise, the Millennial Generation cannot be overlooked as a driving force.

There are some excellent resources we came across in putting this post together. See below for a list of articles.

Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change (Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends)
How Millennials Are Shaping The Future Of Social Entrepreneurship And Technology (Huffington Post)
Characteristics of the Millennial Generation (Millennials Go to College, by Neil Howe and William Strauss)
Generation Sell (The New York Times)
Social entrepreneurship and the millennial generation: all about altruism? (WhyDev)
Social Entrepreneurship Valued Among Millennials (University of Notre Dame)

The Post-Millennial Latest Generation…The Tactile Generation?

The future of social enterprise lies in the hands of the succeeding generation, literally. The post-millennial generation has grown up using smart devices and social networks. They will likely learn to text and browse the internet long before they learn to write in cursive.

And as touch is often related to feel. They will are also the first generation to truly feel some of the impacts of the influx of social media. Cyberbullying seems to already be reaching new highs while simultaneously stooping to unthinkable lows. The new generation is also seeing the impact of their parents and older siblings’ support for new equalities such as marriage equality. They may be the first generation to truly feel the lift of the inequality, prejudice, and stigma previously associated with coming out.

Additionally, they have been born into feeling the effects of guns. Murder-suicide, mass shootings, and epic debates on gun control are not a one-off in this post-millennial generation, they have becoming increasingly and alarming a reality.

For social enterprise, it is an uncertain reception with the newest generation—they already have a great deal on their plate. However, there hope that just as the differences between people of one sexual orientation or another may soon be lifted, that this new tactile generation will also be able to think beyond for-profit, non-profit, and hybrid businesses to create a more universal social enterprise that describes not only a single sector but the whole sector.