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Poverty Reduction

Agri Mashup: Updated

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

Agri Mashup is a strategic tool to increase data utilization for creating new economic opportunities and will have a considerable impact on facilitating access to information and knowledge for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) segment.

Agriculture is possibly the most important sector at the BoP. It provides livelihoods and subsistence for the largest number of people worldwide. The technology and knowledge largely exist today to make agriculture profitable, inclusive and sustainable.

Farmers and entrepreneurs at the BoP, especially those in rural communities, face many barriers due to a variety of obstacles:
- Informal business environments and inadequate management of processes.
- Insufficient information and know-how to adapt to markets needs and demands
- Lack of productivity, quality and excellence, their products are often unfinished.
- Serious difficulties to built relationships with suppliers, costumers and partners.
- Low levels of capitalization

Our project will target inclusive and sustainable agriculture at the Base of Pyramid (BoP) in order to boost income, employment, quality of life and help to alleviate poverty. It will help to incorporate farmers and low-income entrepreneurs into the value chains of big agro-industrial businesses in a sustainable and inclusive way.

Agri Mashup offer relevant content by visualizing key information in areas such as market demands, legal advice, sources of financing, government services, business opportunities and technical information. It also addresses some of the major problems facing farmers and low-income entrepreneurs: access to formal economy, integration with global markets, fair trade conditions, better prices and how to giving aggregate value to their products. These people have limited education and understanding of business models. However these creative and successful people are true entrepreneurs who are generating real income, they are able to get themselves out poverty and all they need is access to right tools.

Agri Mashup

This project also present opportunity for visionary companies looking for new markets to increase competitive advantage while helping BoP communities meet their basic needs but also accelerate economic growth, reduce inequality and poverty.

 

African Soul, American Heart

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

The African Soul, American Heart humanitarian project, supporting Sudanese Lost Boy and war orphan Joseph Akol Makeer, will build a orphanage / orphan center in Duk Payuel, southern Sudan, to provide food, shelter, school supplies, and other basic life needs for the 2,000+ orphans of that village. A really successful fundraising campaign will allow us to build other orphanages / orphan centers for the 16,000+ orphans in Duk County, southern Sudan. The project team has 30 hours of video footage; we are working towards a 30-50 minute documentary about Joseph's life and his goal of building an orphanage in his home village. The documentary will be complete by fall 2008; a fundraising goal of $100,000 has been set for fall 2009, the orphanage / orphan center will be operational by fall 2010, although some aid can be delivered as funds are raised.

1. DonorTrust

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

We envision a twofold change. The developing world [DW] will be lifted onto the first step of the ladder out of poverty and towards development they control; and N.Americans will recapture meaning through connection to something beyond themselves and something that will change the world.

Because DonorTrust (DT) will set a new bar for Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) doing project work, we won't leave these NPOs without a solution. DT is OpenSource-any NPOs can use it and be empowered to live up to the NPO promise-to take care of the funds donors entrust to us, and then to PROVE IT!

DT builds community by:
- DT is a technology that empowers community-to-community (C-2-C) philanthropy. Classrooms, families, departments in corporations can create an online community to change the world by giving to communities in the [DW]. We are creating a tighter link between these communities.
- DT facilitates more personal communication between the individuals within communities - empowering people to reach out, ask questions, share thoughts, and become one community.
- Community in N.America will be enhanced by sharing in a common goal: participating in lifting villages out of poverty
- We will connect classrooms in N.America with those in the [DW] through DT, empowering students around the globe to work together on projects, learning from one another and together.
- DT is about empowering everyday people to do something about a cause they are passionate about. The technology will decouple the typical components in an Int'l development NPO:
a) advocacy
b) project implementation
c) back-office / admin.
By decoupling these components we can empower a person passionate about a particular cause or region (e.g. water, or Kenya) to advocate for those specific projects and we take care of the rest-crowd-sourcing advocacy, and allowing people to build their own communities in N.America.
-Macro: we want to build the community of the generation that ends extreme poverty. We provide the tools for people to join to change the world. Much like generations that came before us that were part of the peace movement, ending apartheid, ending slavery, or ending communism - DT will provide the ability for THIS generation to stand up and make a difference.

Biz-o-mat, for small business in developing countries

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

There will be less poverty, because poor people in developing countries will be empowered to create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

Biz-o-mat helps people in developing countries to establish and expand small businesses. It provides free information and links to information on all business-related topics, in most languages.

A YouTube video that uses this photo to explain some of the social and technology issues involved in this project. What do you see in this picture?

The information is managed by the franchisees: niche experts who make money using Biz-o-mat’s hosted software.

This mashup project will enable those franchisees to have many tools with which to share their expertise, and help small businesses in developing countries. The target beneficiaries are people in places where the physical and and institutional infrastructures are relatively weak.

The result of this mashup challenge will be that Biz-o-mat.com will be better able to help more people.

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  • Stanford Social Innovation Review
  • L'Atelier North America
  • The Panelist
  • Good
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