Santa Clara University

The in-residence component of our signature Global Social Benefit Incubator concluded last week, with 18 field-based social entrepreneurs returning to their 9 countries to implement the business plans they developed while at Santa Clara University. The culmination of their two weeks on campus is always the business plan presentations, attracting a diverse and high-level audience of over 350.

Each of the social entrepreneurs has 15 minutes to present their business plan to a panel of Silicon Valley leaders, after which they receive feedback and have only a moment to respond. The Center videotapes the presentations so that the social entrepreneurs can continue learning from the experience. Our goal is to help more social entrepreneurs help more of the global poor, with a “big hairy audacious goal” of positively impacting the lives of 1B by 2020 – 25% of the current global poor. The UN projects an additional 2 B people on the planet by 2050, with all but 50 M in the developing world. Successful and sustainable social enterprises act as nuclei for economic growth in the communities they serve. By doing so, they essentially create emerging markets.

The GSBI exemplifies what I call “practical social justice.” The 18 social entrepreneurs we heard from last Thursday did not offer theories about how to change the world: they showed us how it’s done.                       

Imagine a world where the 1.5 B people 'off the grid' – in Africa, Latin America, Asia, India – have light for children to read and parents to work after night falls; where people can charge their mobile phones without traveling all day; where sustainably generated power can be sustainably stored; where smallholder dairy farmers can keep their cows’ milk cold long enough to sell it; where the very poor in Haiti can cook using 40% less fuel, reducing deforestation at the same time. Imagine a world without energy poverty.                               

Imagine a world where Filipino women living near garbage dumps; or Roma, also known as Gypsies, in Slovakia; or African slum youth; can all earn a living wage and be proud of their work.

Imagine a world where West Africans earn a living growing biofuels for their own communities; where solar lanterns light up East African villages through an Avon-style model, employing local women.  

Imagine a world where the voiceless, poorest of the poor in India can tell their stories to the world, and effect change in their own communities.                     

Imagine a world where even, or especially, the unbanked can use their mobile phones for secure financial transactions with any merchant; where Filipino microenterprise owners can scale their businesses to a living income while providing essential goods and services.

Imagine a world where rural Haitians can sustainably grow their own protein-rich food; where poor Mexican children have enough micronutrients for their brains to develop. Imagine a world of healthy people.

If you can imagine all of the above, thank you for joining us; if you cannot, you missed a unique opportunity to see how these dreams are becoming reality through the vision and very hard work of the 2011 cohort of GSBI social entrepreneurs.

I was honored, and humbled, to be in their company. Each of them is an amazing human. Collectively, they are the promise of a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

Next year will mark the 10^th anniversary of the GSBI. Mark your calendars for the August 23, 2012 business plan presentations, a window into how to change the world for the better. 

List of this year's GSBI social entrepreneurs