Making the world a better place is hard work.

Like biking over 8,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina for instance…

Join Net Impact UCLA and two innovative Dutch friends next TUESDAY, October 26th at 5:30pm in Broad 2160E to hear how they’re working to solve the global water crisis.

Their project is called Cycle for Water, a cross between the power of business and the heart of a nonprofit and they’re coming to show off their bamboo bicycles. They’ve been featured on CNN and are sponsored by the accounting firm KPMG, and will be at UCLA to share their message and experience on the road. This is also a great opportunity to meet some important people at KPMG in an informal setting!

So, future accountants, cyclists, IDS majors, business econ majors, global citizens, water conservationists come on out…all are welcome!

Looking forward to see you there!

Much like the well-known “One for One” deal that the shoe company TOMS offers, Kona AfricaBike has a similar “Two-For-One” promotion. Kona, an independent company that designs and sells mountain bikes worldwide, is willing to donate one AfricaBike to non-profit and non-governmental organizations that aim to improve the quality of life for those in areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Kona specifically designed this mountain bike called the AfricaBike to cater to the people and environmental terrain of sub-Saharan Africa. The AfricaBike was first intended to be an effective, reliable, and affordable means of transportation in order to deliver antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS patients in Botswana. Kona AfricaBikes caters mainly to Bicycling Magazine’s BikeTown Africa Project, which aims to provide bicycles to healthcare workers in order to deliver foods and AIDS care services to those in Africa. However, the purposes of the AfricaBike are now expanding and are now on sale worldwide. AfricaBikes have been donated to numerous organizations, such as the HopeFirst Foundation. Just recently, Kona and HopeFirst collaborated on a project called Celebrate Gambia 2010, that sent 225 AfricaBikes in order to open doors of opportunities to children, mostly girls, in Gambia. According to volunteers of the HopeFirst Foundation, a bike can get children to school four times faster than walking. With the AfricaBikes, the children are able to save enough time to be able to go to school and be able to accomplish family obligations at home, like caring for siblings and preparing meals. With the AfricaBikes, they are no longer obligated to stop schooling just because they don’t have enough time to do work at home and also go to school. HopeFirst and Kona’s goal was for the kids to not have to “choose between their families and an education”. So, just like you bought your pair of TOMS to feel good about yourself and how your purchase helped a needy child somewhere in the world, if you every consider buying a bike, think of AfricaBikes. Although AfricaBikes can be quite costly, your purchase and support of AfricaBikes allows for a great new recreational activity, a new mode of transportation, but most importantly, a possible positive life-changing contribution to those in Africa.

Visit www.konaafricabike.com or www.konabasicneeds.org for more information!

Also check out these videos! http://www.youtube.com/user/konabasicneeds

Most of us have heard of the revolutionary idea of Microfinance that has both changed the way people think about poverty and entrepreneurship and has even won its innovator, Muhammad Yunus. The basic concept behind Microfinance is to give small loans to impoverished people who do not have sufficient credit to get a loan from a large bank in order to help these people create their own businesses to lift themselves out of poverty. These loans not only teach people the power of individualism and entrepreneurship it also helps create a new social standing for people who have long been kept under poverty because of their lack of capital and perceived value to society, especially women.

Now there is a new site, comparable to Kiva offering microloans for people in impoverished countries to get clean energy in the form of solar panels. This site is called Energy in Common. Many countries in the world lack access to energy and even if they are granted this limited access, it is only to cheap and dirty energy that is harmful to the environment. The website touches on this concept of energy poverty-the grim reality that 1/3 of the world does not have access to modern power and is forced to use outdated methods of firewood collection that cause health effects and indoor air pollution. Investments in solar panels will not only help the environment, but will also help these people gain access to a constant source of energy and override the hefty energy costs that they would incur on their homes and businesses from buying dirty energy. Like Kiva, you can make loans in $25 chunks and can be expected to be paid back in a matter of months. The cool thing is that Energy in Common also keeps tabs on how much an investment will reduce carbon emissions so that you can see that your loan is not only fighting poverty, but climate change as well.

This is the exact kind of mission that Net Impact endorses-to create a cleaner more sustainable world via means of social responsibility. Not only can we as students have a hand in reducing carbon missions, but we can also help eliminate the disparity that lies in our world. One of my public health professors once said that the largest epidemic that faces our world is poverty. We have a duty to fight this global epidemic. By embracing the same ideals as Kiva and incorporating it in a way that fights global climate change, Energy in Common strives to create a more sustainable and equitable world.

http://www.energyincommon.org/

Have you ever wondered where the delicious brownies in your Ben & Jerry’s half-baked ice cream comes from? Well, while you are enjoying a decadent bowl of ice cream, you are, in fact, helping the community of Yonkers, NY! Ben & Jerry’s gets their brownies from Greyston Bakery located in Yonker’s, New York. A Zen Buddhist meditation group, who hired the chronically unemployed, opened the bakery in 1982. It is a leading model of business for social enterprise building a coalition with employees, community and shareholders. Their mission is to support low-income individuals and families of Yonkers as they create their own path of self-sufficiency and community transformation.

Greyston Bakery is also a part of the Greyston Foundation, which is a for-profit business. My favorite quote on their website reads, “We don’t hire people to make brownies, we make brownies in order to hire people.” Their programs have reached 2,200 community members annually and it also operates an integrated $13,000,000 network of not-for-profit and for-profit companies in the Westchester County providing jobs, workforce development, housing, youth services, community gardens, health care, and a gourmet bakery business. The Greyston Foundation is a beautiful model that makes people feel valued and that they have more to offer in life. Not only does this program provide food and shelter, but also gives people opportunities to learn how to advance themselves in the workforce and community. The Greyston Foundation and Bakery is a real life application of the fish proverb: “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.”

To learn more you can visit their website at http://www.greystonbakery.com/

You may have heard of United Prosperity at the Women and Microfinance panel.  United Prosperity is different from other microfinance nonprofit organizations because instead of lending money for the loan you guarantee the loan for an entrepreneur.  United Prosperity then consolidates the guarantees on multiple loans for the local microfinance institution.  Then the bank can issue a loan that is greater than the total guarantee amount.  As a guarantor your money goes even farther than you would if you were loaning it to someone.  Once the entrepreneur repays the loan to the bank the guarantee is freed up and a guarantor can withdraw the money or choose to support another entrepreneur.

Lending money to an entrepreneur is an easy way to make a difference in the life of someone halfway around the world.  We hear a lot of stories about poverty and don’t feel that we can do anything to help.  Helping people to get a microloan is great because it is not a handout.  You would be helping someone or a group of people to develop their business so they can sustain themselves.  Also, since you are lending money instead of giving it, once you get the money back you can loan it to someone else.  You can also decide the amount of money you would like to loan, from $5 to however much you would want to give.  The mission of United Prosperity is to end poverty, and with just a few dollars anyone can help their cause.

Getting involved is easy.  All you have to do is go to http://www.unitedprosperity.org/us/, pick an entrepreneur to support (or more than one) and pick an amount of money you would like to lend for the guarantee of their loan.  Since you can loan a small amount, this is a less daunting way for someone to start being involved in microfinance.  You can track the progress of the entrepreneurs you lend to.  For example, I lent $10 to the Balbinder Kaur & group, Guru Nanak colony.  Since then, enough money for the guarantee has been raised.  The members of the group will be using the loan money to buy another sewing machine, like Balbinder Kaur, products to sell in their store, or to pay for other expenses to support their business.

Last summer, Safaricom, Africa’s largest cellular phone service, released the solar powered cell phone and sales have been astronomical. In Africa, power shortage causes many villages to be completely without electricity. For this reason, citizens often walk miles to pay huge fees at hubs to charge their cell phones. For example, Ntombenhle Nsele of a small village in South Africa travels twenty miles to the nearest town to charge her phone for 80 cents. Considering most Africans live on less than two dollars a day this is a huge cost to have to deal with, never mind the cost of phones being around fifty dollars. The solar powered cell phones made available through Safaricom are a great green solution to this power shortage issue.

Only about 1.3 million Kenyans have electricity, yet 17 million are cellular phone users, so the adoption of solar powered phones would be hugely beneficial to Africa and other developing rural areas. These ZTE Corporation solar phones are available for a retail price of thirty- five dollars, which is costly, but comparable to other mobile phone options. These phones are able to charge during the day, even during talk. This eliminates the long treks to charging stations and the large costs of electricity for charging. Cell phones allow many families and couples, who must be separated due to lack of work in many areas, to communicate to one another and for this reason, have become immensely popular.

This business venture is both green and beneficial to the people of rural Africa who live without electricity. Still, further developments can be made to increase the efficiency of cell phone use. Creating efficient solar power or fire heat powered chargers for the phones that the people already own would allow many more citizens to be able to charge their phones without being swindled by the huge cost of charging stations. This is definitely a step in the right direction, this solar powered phone business venture has been extremely helpful to many African people living in rural areas and will hopefully allow for increased communication and unity in Africa.

Well, I’m hoping to tell you more about what Net Impact does as an organization, and especially here at UCLA.

On a broader level, Net Impact is a well-established nonprofit organization that aims to inspire and educate people about the role of business in social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Net Impact’s roots are at the business school level, and in fact, there is a chapter of Net Impact at almost all of the best business schools in the US and abroad. Historically, students have joined the organization in order to network with other like-minded people, to learn about and collaborate on new ideas, and even to find jobs in a relevant area. In the last few years, Net Impact has started chapters at the undergraduate level, and this is where we come in.

Net Impact Undergrad has a slightly less formal framework — we at UCLA have tried to mold it into an organization that caters well to the students of UCLA. We have broadened our scope to include not only businesses, but also ventures that, in our eyes, are socially responsible and also socially DEVELOPMENTAL. Thus, we also have projects that promote economic development (such as microfinance) and projects that hopefully will help people in need (such as book drives).

We have had some educational components recently, including a quickfire challenge about “greenwashing”, on Earth Day, and cohosting a panel discussion on microfinance and its impacts.

We also have had some fun activities, like a field-trip to the NRDC building in Santa Monica, which is incredibly environmentally-friendly and fascinating to learn about.

The Social Ventures committee, focused on coming up with educational and exciting events, has a few more things up our sleeves before the year comes to an end:

5/19 Lunch talk with the CEO of ACCION, a leading microfinance institution. 11:45am-12:45pm at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Lunch will be provided. Co-hosted by Net Impact at Anderson. Please email netimpact.ucla@gmail.com if you are interested. 

5/24 Lunch talk: Socially Responsible Investing
Time: 11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Location: B301, UCLA Anderson School of Management

Come learn from author Paul Herman*, CEO and founder of HIP Investor, Inc. (Human Interaction + Profit). HIP is the new type of investing – looking beyond financials to quantifiable measures of human, social and environmental value. This HIP 100 Index (SM) Portfolio seeks to outperform the S&P 100 index.  See www.HIPinvestor.com for the most recent calendar quarter performance and full disclosures. Hosted by Net Impact at Anderson. RSVP at http://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_ahgH38D4xgIwCcQ&SVID=

Other Upcoming Events:

Better World Books drive — Donate all your unwanted, gently used books (I know you have about a million!). Marked bins will be set up all over campus. The books will be sold and a portion of the proceeds will go to a much-deserving charity.

Net Impact 101 – Learn more about Net Impact and corporations that actually are socially responsible. AND eat delicious snacks from some of those companies. Don’t miss it!

If you ever have any questions or would like to come to our meetings or events, don’t hesitate to email netimpact.ucla@gmail.com.

LOCATION: Boelter 5440

START TIME: Thursday May 6, 2010 7 p.m.

END TIME: Thursday May 6, 2010 9 p.m.

DESCRIPTION:

Are you interested in learning more about Net Impact at UCLA?

This is your opportunity!

Net Impact 101 will delve into the world of corporate social responsibility, emphasizing the importance of this initiative and highlighting some companies who exemplify social responsibility. Take this opportunity to gain knowledge about one of the cornerstones of Net Impact’s ideology. Learn how you can become a part of Net Impact, a group focused on inspiring, equipping and educating students about using business to change the world!

We hope to see you there!

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
-Edmund Burke

Let’s face it. Women in America have it pretty good. While the glass ceiling is still contested in our workforce and there still may be work to be done, the women’s rights we really should be advocating are those of developing countries. Women in developing countries who are genuinely poor often lack the skills and confidence to approach business in the same way men do. This only perpetuates masculine dominance in these societies.

A handful of women in Nepal are fighting to change that.  “The rural women are capable of doing anything. All they need is a little encouragement,” says Baysal. Together these women pooled their resources to set up a nursery. Hauling poles and boulders from a nearby riverbank, they were able to start up a successful enterprise. “These are things we would never do at home,” says Jamuna. “The money from the sale will be put into a fund to install a drinking water scheme or a food processing mill,” says Jamuna, smiling confidently.

When women and microfinance combine forces, the results speak for themselves, and permeate into all levels of society. Not only does it enable 50% of the local working population and consequently grow the economy, but it makes men realize that women are valuable members of society.

If you’ve been keeping up with our posts these last few days, or even if you haven’t, we hope you see the revolutionary power of microfinance. Net Impact wants you to join us tomorrow, Wednesday April 28th at 7pm in Korn Hall to see some important leaders in microfinance today. Check it out and keep in touch with Net Impact by joining our facebook group.

Pendo Luisi is 27 years old and was a kindergarten teacher until she became pregnant with her second child. She then realized she would not be able to support her children with that salary so she began to sell merchandise door-to-door and opened a snack shop. She made a small profit from these activities but it was not enough so she decided to ask for a loan to open her own cafe. Residing in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, she belongs to a group called Dhahabu (“gold” in Swahili) that consists of 36 members who keep each other accountable and help one another repay their loans. With the loan of $175 she received from Kiva, she was able to open her cafe. She completely repaid her loan within 6 months and was also able to buy stock for her cafe which has allowed her to buy more cosmetics to sell door-to-door. Pendo was also able to increase her profits from $208 to $520 a month. She couldn’t be happier about receiving her loan and is so excited about her profit increases that were made possible through Kiva. This is microfinance in action.

source: http://www.kiva.org/lend/23303