Net Tuesdays are a chance for social changemakers interested in the social web to come together offline to share success stories, learn about projects and tools, and collaborate. View up-coming Net Tuesday events:
Douala, Cameroon
Washington, DC
Montreal, QC
Find out if there is a Net Tuesday in your city, or start your own!
NetSquared is an initiative ofTechSoup
NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
- Home
- Targeted development for social, economic and gender empowerment
Targeted development for social, economic and gender empowerment
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Selling and deploying software tools to fund a strategy proposal which will leverage funding to deploy further technology yeilding revenue for a major reform of institutional childcare and the seeding of self-help enterprise, to prevent future repet
Supporting organization:
People-Centered Economic Development
URL:
http://www.p-ced.com
City:
Kharkiv
State/Region:
Kharkiv oblast
Country:
Ukraine
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Poverty eradication, cause and effect, is our aim. This is a project to leverage international development aid funding which will, in turn:
Create a multi-component targetted economic development package. Build rehabilitations centres for mentally and physically disabled children in institutional care. Establish family type group care homes for orphans and street children.
Create a full cost recovery microcredit program, as piloted and proven in Russia to engender sustainable micro business creation.
Create a network of revenue yeilding village Wimax installations, deploying technologies such as back channel satellite streaming, VOIP telephony to educate and empower rural communities and assist micro enterprises to reach target markets.
Establish a faculty for social enterprise in a State University.
Sustainability (financial) model:
Funding is derived from sales and maintenance of a software product within the United Kingdom, a product which has returned a sustained revenue flow for the past 15 years. We deploy the original model of a social purpose business, developed by ourselves, which returns at least 50% of profit to community purpose.
Defined by P-CED in a 1996 whitepaper, the concept has circulated through the academic world, accelerated by IT networking, such that in 2004, the United Kingdom re-invented it as the Community Interest Company form in law.
Additionally, it predicted that in the developing information age, access to information would be central to the needs of economic development and that the new poor would be those deprived of information access.
The P-CED economic development paradigm was proven in a 5 year USAID pilot project in Russia, demonstrating full cost recovery of the 6 million dollars invested. Of the 10,000 micro business created, more than 80% were started by women, demonstrating that targeting poverty is also gender empowerment.
Potential obstacles:
political antagonism, organised crime, defamation. We operate in a hostile climate and face opposition from interests determined to maintain secrecy on the conditions of children in institutional care.
Resource Needs:
We have created this project from our own resources and intellectual capital and there are three main areas in which technology has been deployed to achieve this.
First we gain our income as a social business from the development, sale and maintenance of a software product used by other businesses to manage their meeting rooms and suppplied services. To provide an international support service from any location we installed SIP telephony and redirection, a helpesk/knowledgebase service and installed a public service wifi hotspot to augment revenue flow.
Secondly, we support the human rights advocacy overseas by providing logistical services, reasearching and communicating with the technology providers who may be called on as suppliers for our project proposal. We communicate between the two arms of the business using message encryption knowing email is monitored. To promote the cause we use the DotnetNuke CMS platform to develop our website and blog to raise awareness, participating also in a number of high visibility discussion forums.
Last, we deploy our knowledge and research in the areas of VSAT, VOIP, back channel streaming and Wireless networking to define a revenue yielding component for our project proposal.
We need no resources to complete the proposal aside from the collaboration of others in raising awareness of its existence.
Key Milestones:
Raising international awareness of street children through letters to journals and radio interview:
http://eng.maidanua.org/node/331
Converting a for profit business to social enterprise using an economic paradigm concieved by ourselves:
Gaining editorial permission on a major activist web publication to blog about childcare conditions and poverty.
Going public about "Death Camp" conditions in institutional care of disabled children
http://eng.maidanua.org/node/581
A signal of response:
http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en/publish/news_article?art_id=69671033&ca...
Finally, to comprehend the present, it's necessary to understand the past and here's an associated campaign to raise awareness:
Project Summary:
A project to research both technology infrastructure and conditions of institutional childcare, to produce a project plan to leverage funding for a large scale targetted economic development program, deploying information technology and microfinance in a profit for purpose paradigm.
Ultimate objectives. To relieve poverty and the effects which render institutionalised children as the raw materials for street prostitution, pornograpy and human trafficking. To block corruption which prevents ordinary people creating their own livelyhood and to empower them with access to information and credit. To prevent future recurrence with education in the application of social enterprise.
Comments
Following up
Jeff, thanks for your comments. I think your project is out of my area of expertise. I do suggest that you pick one portion of your project and develop the specification for that when submitting for a grant request. Your project seems very well meaning but very broad - kind of overwhelmingly broad. I'd say focus in your grant request a bit more.
Lots of chances for collaboration
I think you will find many interested people in NetSquared -- this is a very compelling project.
--ivan (quixotic1.com/Genocide Intervention Network)
Some clarification (hopefully)
I realise what I'm describing above may cause some confusion, so I'll attempt to clarify, hoping for some advice.
People-Centered Economic Development (P-CED) UK is a social business based in the United Kingdom. As a social enterprise under UK goverment definitions, directing more than 50% of profit to community purpose, it is the revenue source for the advocacy work being undertaken by People-Centered Economic Development Ukraine.
What P-CED UK does is sell and support a software product used by commerical and goverment organisations whilst providing logistical support for the efforts of P-CED Ukraine. So. we need to deploy technology both in communication between the two functions and to enable us to provide support to our paying customers such that all parties recieve satsifactory service.
P-CED Ukraine as an advocacy, campaigns on human rights issues, researching and developing strategic economic development plans designed to leverage funding for action on these issue.
Our work, therefore, is to produce such a plan and see it through to fruition. We are now at the stage of having completed and submitted the plan to a potential funder, now anticipating a period of several months discussion during which we must continue to maintain an in-country presence.
Within the plan and therefore part of the research is a revenue yeilding technology component.
Elsewhere, in the community blog, I've referred to another project totally unrelated to the above involving community networking in my own location in the UK, which may confuse even further.
If you think I might express all of this better, please let me know.
Regards,
Jeff
My project, Targeted Development for Social and Economic Empowerment,has
been nominated for the NetSquared Innovation Fund Award. Check out my
proposal at (make the following a link):
http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/targetted-economic-development-for-social-and-economic-empowerment
Elevator ptich