by This New World: HuffPost
The East Side Riders BC are providing opportunities to vulnerable kids in South Central Los Angeles by steering them in a new direction.
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Monday, 21 May 2018
Friday, 24 July 2015
What is a Social Enterprise? Defining Social Enterprise and Social Business
by Clare Jones, Clearly So: https://www.clearlyso.com/what-is-a-social-enterprise-2/Over the past few years, as ClearlySo has grown and changed, the most common questions we have been asked are: “What is a social enterprise?” and “What is a social business?”.
We used to have a definition for each of these different phrases. We knew underneath both simply meant an organisation that seeks to be financially successful while creating social and/or environmental impact. It has commercial goals and it has impact goals - it is really not that complicated.
With famous examples of these kinds of businesses - Green and Blacks, Divine Chocolate or Ben and Jerry’s - people can understand what it means to consider social impact alongside financial return. But sometimes it has felt pretty complicated. We’ve all made diagrams - like this one:
We argued in 2010 that “The Time for Social Enterprise is Now”:
Many people who approach us ask how social enterprises make their money, or how a social enterprise is different from a business (or indeed how it is different from a charity). Because there is such a range of high-impact organisations operating in such a myriad of ways, these questions are impossible to answer precisely - except that, simply put, these businesses have impact and financial success at their core.
Sometimes it is useful to consider some organisations as “impact first”, like charities, and some as “purely for profit”. This spectrum of organisation types shows the range of organisations working to create change - and there are many. It’s also very limiting. Considering the landscape as “charity vs. company” or “social enterprise vs. social business” obscures the wider movement that sees business and finance as a force for good.
It means considering the majority of businesses (that do not exist with positive social impact as a core metric for business success) against then a small niche for charities, social enterprises, social businesses, co-operatives, mutuals, BCorps, community interest companies … (that list just keeps getting longer).
It means disregarding the idea that all businesses have an impact. Some have overwhelmingly positive impacts, some have overwhelmingly negative impacts, and many fall somewhere between the two.
Although these labels can be extremely useful (think about the Cabinet Office using “legally defined social enterprise” to determine who is eligible for social investment tax relief), and many of our clients are examples of those who define themselves as social businesses or social enterprises, we work with all kinds of high-impact businesses.
Charities like the London Early Years Foundation are run as businesses; they run sustainable models that support their growth and their impact aims. Yes, they may reinvest their profits: this does not mean that they themselves are ‘non-profit’ while traditional companies are ‘for-profit’. Profit, as June Sullivan, their CEO, explains, is not a dirty word.
Justgiving is an online donation platform that has revolutionised how we give to charity - and it is a business.
Businesses can be early-stage ventures or they can be long-established companies that consider every aspect of their social and environmental impact, like HCT. It doesn’t matter to us whether a company is structured as a charity, a company limited by shares, or a community interest company: what matters to us is what they do, how they plan to grow their business, and how they create social or environmental change.
For these businesses, the financial bottom line matters, and so does the social or environmental impact. We have over 5,000 of these businesses in our network, many of which are growing rapidly. We believe that these businesses can be both high-return and high-impact; we do not see an “impact see-saw” where investors and businesses trade off financial returns in order to achieve social impact.
In any industry, different types of businesses have different risk and return profiles. We are simply adding impact to the equation. All businesses have an impact, we just believe they should be accountable for it - and we want to help those businesses that create positive impacts to thrive. We envision a future where if you don’t care about your social impact, you won’t have a sustainable business.
Where great business is founded upon great principles, it is possible to do good while doing well - where enterprise and investment are powerful forces for good.
Image: Aduna, whose superfruits create sustainable livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa.
Friday, 3 July 2015
VIDEOS: 13 Films About Post-Growth Economics: A Post-Growth Economy is Not Only Necessary for Planetary Survival, But Will Make Our Lives Way Better, Too. These Films Explain Why
by Films For Action, filmsforaction.org: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/infinite-growth-on-a-finite-planet/GDP is a terrible way to measure economic progress. A post-growth future is about growing things that actually matter: happiness, health and social well-being.
Every day on the TV, belt-way politicians and economists tell us the answer to our problems is more economic growth.
And yet, a growing number of indicators show that this kind of "progress" isn't progress at all. It's actually killing the planet - and isn't actually measuring the kind of progress that actually matters.
The kind of economic growth they keep talking about simply can't continue on a finite planet with finite resources. We could try to keep our extractive economy going till the ecological web we're a part of starts collapsing - but, I don't think that would end well for us.
It's time we throw this absurd economist logic out the door, understand some basic truths about our relationship to the planet, and start defining progress in a way that makes sense.
These 13 excellent films point the way.
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1 min ·
What the impossible hamster has to teach us about economic growth. A
new animation from nef (the new economics foundation), scripted by
Andrew Simms, numbers crunched by Viki...
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6 min ·
Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment
remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments
stagger under record deficits. Richard Heinberg...
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18 min ·
Enough Is Enough lays out a visionary but realistic
alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth-an economy where
the goal is enough, not more.
“Based on the...
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3 min ·
Our politicians are hung up on keeping the growth curve
rising. But does GDP really tell us all we need to know about a
country's wealth and well-being? In this new RSA Short...
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34 min ·
A 34 minute animated documentary about resource depletion and the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.
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65 min ·
Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the
scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly
every problem we face: fundamentalism and...
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3 min ·
How do we become a sustainable civilization? GrowthBusters
explores our society's worship of growth everlasting: Economic Growth,
Population Growth, Increasing Consumption, and...
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5 min ·
This fun animation provides a vision of what a post-consumer
society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing
re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale...
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5 min ·
Psychologist Tim Kasser discusses how America's culture of consumerism
undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present
marketing messages that "the good...
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25 min ·
The economic crash of 2008 revealed not only the frailty and
vulnerability of the economic system, it also showed the false basis
that the growth economy is built on – the...
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9 min ·
What is a steady-state economy and how could it positively impact human behavior and our survival on the planet?
In this film, the concept of steady-state economics is...
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Monday, 23 February 2015
VIDEO: Japan’s Underground Automated Bike Parking is Something Every Country Should Have
by Inigo del Castillo, Lost at E Minor: http://www.lostateminor.com/2015/02/20/japans-underground-automated-bike-parking-something-every-country/
While the rest of us struggle with bike chains and bike theft, the Japanese have already solved these problems with underground bike parking-lots managed by robots!
In the video above, a bike is placed onto an elevator and gets sucked into a shaft full of bicycle holders. A contraption neatly parks it until the owner comes back. Convenient, right?
Designed by engineering company Giken Seisakusho, the underground bike parking lots can store up to 204 standard bicycles and can park one in just 13 seconds. Cyclists can use the facility using a rental card that costs 1,800 yen per month (around $15).
The innovative technology has been in main cities like Tokyo and Osaka for a few years, but it’s only now that we get to see how this awesome system actually works.
Via Design Boom
While the rest of us struggle with bike chains and bike theft, the Japanese have already solved these problems with underground bike parking-lots managed by robots!
In the video above, a bike is placed onto an elevator and gets sucked into a shaft full of bicycle holders. A contraption neatly parks it until the owner comes back. Convenient, right?
Designed by engineering company Giken Seisakusho, the underground bike parking lots can store up to 204 standard bicycles and can park one in just 13 seconds. Cyclists can use the facility using a rental card that costs 1,800 yen per month (around $15).
The innovative technology has been in main cities like Tokyo and Osaka for a few years, but it’s only now that we get to see how this awesome system actually works.
Via Design Boom
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Thursday, 3 April 2014
Redesigning Civilization - With Permaculture
by Toby Hemenway, Pattern Literacy, Resilience.org: http://www.resilience.org/resource-detail/2124479-redesigning-civilization-with-permaculture
Modern agriculture, industry and finance all extract more than they give back, and the Earth is starting to show the strain.
How did we get in this mess and what can we do to help our culture get back on track?
The ecological design approach known as permaculture offers powerful tools for the design of regenerative, fair ways to provide food, energy, livelihood, and other needs while letting humans share the planet with the rest of nature.
This presentation will give you insight into why our culture has become fundamentally unsustainable, and offers ecologically based solutions that can help create a just and sustainable society.
Modern agriculture, industry and finance all extract more than they give back, and the Earth is starting to show the strain.
How did we get in this mess and what can we do to help our culture get back on track?
The ecological design approach known as permaculture offers powerful tools for the design of regenerative, fair ways to provide food, energy, livelihood, and other needs while letting humans share the planet with the rest of nature.
This presentation will give you insight into why our culture has become fundamentally unsustainable, and offers ecologically based solutions that can help create a just and sustainable society.
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Voices of Resilience – Kaila Colbin: Activating Open Space in Christchurch, New Zealand
by Kaila Colbin, Neighborhood Empowerment Network: http://empowersf.org/voices-of-resilience-kaila-colbin-activating-open-space/
Voices of Resilience - Kaila Colbin - Activating Open Space from NENtv on Vimeo.
Voices of Resilience - Kaila Colbin - Activating Open Space from NENtv on Vimeo.
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