Last December, we launched on our Facebook page the game Social Business Youngsters, an app dedicated to people under 25 who wants to contribute to build a better world through social business initiatives.

The game is still going on, (until end of March) and almost 2000 people have already subscribed to be part of this innovative “call for projects”.

After several weeks, let’s have a look on the results !

What is blindingly obvious is that 2 countries are really implicated in submitting projects: France and Bangladesh. Sure, both countries are quite close to each other because of the initiative Grameen Danone Foods Ltd, but… are they becoming competitors? We need more weeks to shed light on this subject.

The other point is about Categories: it seems that social business youngsters are most interested in creating their own project or start-up than simply promoting or doing acamdecal studies about social business. Indeed, the category SB Create is the most declared by members of the game whereas SB Research and SB Promote are the less used. It inspires me one question: Where all the students writing a thesis on social business have gone? It’s time to take your chance !

Now, what can we say about the best schools involved in the game? Bangladesh is the star with 2 universities on the podium:
-    Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka

Hello everyone,
 
I am very happy to join the danone.communities team for the six months to come! I will work on community mangement with Olivier and Laurence to gather the efforts of the various communities involved in the danone.communities adventure and promote social business.
 
I discovered social business and social entrepreneurship through two main readings during my years of preparatory classes, ‘A World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism' by Professor Yunus and '80 Hommes pour Changer le Monde'by Sylvain Darnil and Mathieu Le Roux. I was finally convinced at the conference with Professor Yunus organized by danone.communities in February 2010. I was immediately excited by the idea that a company can make a considerable difference to solve social problems on a large scale, such as malnutrition or access to water in developing countries, or poverty and insecurity in developed countries.

NutriGo project in China is the union of Dumex (biggest Baby Food Company in Danone), One Foundation, NPI Foundation and ILSI-FP China (a government nutrition body) and danone.communities to fight malutrition of babies in rural China through education and the distribution of a fortified complementary product.

Most partners of the NutriGo project gathered In December 2011 in Enshi district of the Hubei province in China to sign the main contracts and launch officially the pilot phase.

Enshi district is 4M people and 6 counties, 2 cities, 1/3 below poverty line - 1200 RMB per year (that is less than 1€ per day per person). Director Zhu of ILSI-FP, one of China's best nutrition experts explains to me how severe malnutrition has almost disappeared from China in 20 years; however, anemia and malnutrition are still prevalent; "Before there was no food; now there is food but people lack the education; we see complementary food as a fast solution to improve the nutrition but the real task will be to educate the people about good nutrition"

The signing ceremony of NutriGo Social Company (December 2011)

Young entrepreneurs are lucky, the Web has become a tool through which they can develop their project, perhaps with more ease and support than when they traded the tires.

Right now, it is not less than three opportunities given to them display their ambition.

The first is the game Social Business Youngsters, hosted on our Facebook page. The principle is simple: you submit a social business project, you put it the right  projects category (Social Business Promote / Research / Create), you build up your team and invite all your friends to collect the maximum votes. The only requirement for participation is to be under 25 years (to be a Youngster!).

Report of the speech made by Emmanuel Marchant, Deputy General Manager of danone.communities, at Ecole de Paris in May 2011.

"In late 2005,Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone, and Muhammad Yunus, president of the Grameen Bank and Peace Nobel Prize 2006, discovered that their ideas come together on the development of poor and decided to form a joint venture, the Grameen Danone Food.
From 2007, a plant produces yogurt fortified with micronutrients in Bangladesh. The same year, Danone and Credit Agricole decided to create an original financial tool: the Fund danone.communities. It aims at supportting the construction of other plants in Bangladesh, to launch other projects in the same spirit in the world, to develop partnerships with local actors or NGOs, and to gather in a community who want to contribute the development of social business, either as actors or as investors of a new genre. Thus was set in motion a dynamic that reinvents the dual economic and social project of Danone and has implications for the management of the company itself."

To read more (in french only) :

Emmanuel Faber is Vice President of Danone and a member of the Board of danone.communities. Totally involved in the promotion of social business to other large companies, he delivers in his latest book "Chemins de traverse" a few keys,  anecdotes and questions notably about its commitment to Prof. Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize 2006, the same year that the project was launched Grameen Danone Foods Ltd.

Franch press have shared some words about this book. Here are some extracts.

(partial translation from our french blog. Please feel free to visit it)

Every week, we are contacted by highly motivated team who have decided to spend several months traveling and studying projects of social entrepreneurs. These particular missions are always taylor-made. We recently launched an "open innovation" task force to share learnings from past experiences and to strengthen upcoming travels in 2012. Thanks to this group, we hope to reach more impact to help the local social businesses visited.  Our group's name ic Travel 4 Change. Thanks to all the organisations which are part of this task force : Babyloan, La Ruche, WiserEarth, Noise, PlaneteEntrepreneur, MakeSens, Lattitude Responsable, CreativEntrepreneurs, Socialter, Drole de Trip, HEC, YunusMovie, Reporter d'Espoir, Youphil,  Facts, Printemps du Bonzai, Lato Sensu, Capa, Groupe SOS, Moovjee, 3petitsGuidons, BNP Paribas, Danone.

Ready to join our cause? Ideas to help? Experiences to be shared ? Please send me an email.

Aside, here is a funny video from Latitude Responsable, who traveled the world to design a business case about Grameen Danone Food, and who are paying a tribute to Matt Harding, famous crazy dancer from Where the hell is Matt.

We were more than 500 to welcome Pr. Muhammad Yunus on stage, Thursday night, for the closing speech of the 1rst day of the Global Social Business Summit 2011, in Vienna, Austria. Members of the danone.communities team were part of this international meeting, to attend and animate Focus Group, to share experiences and feelings about social business, to meet people from all around the world, committed to the same objective: create, promote and support social business.  

Many things will be written, in a very detailed way, and we’re just going to share some cool twitter messages.

Marine Dambrine is student at EDHEC LIlle Business School and member of the Develop'Edhec student association. She was at Nice last week, and attended the G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit. She is our special reporter.

The G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit, taking place from October 31^st to November 2^nd on the Edhec campus in Nice brought most than 400 young entrepreneurs from the 20 member states, with the objective to promote sustainable economic growth. The third day, we had the great opportunity to meet the Professor Muhammad Yunus. For this social-entrepreneurship session, the keynote was: “Microcredit and social business, reinventing capitalism?”. There was no sit left in the lecture theatre and even some entrepreneurs sat on the stairs to listen to the Peace Nobel Prize. It was so impressive to see Muhammad Yunus and see how energetic and optimistic he was. During this meeting, he gave us the strength to set up our social business and maybe change the world.

Marion is a project manager for Lemateki, a social business project, launched in Dakar, Senegal, by Danone. Communities and its partners. This project aims at giving a sustainable  access to a nutritional product fortified cereal-based local for disadvantaged children.

Marion joined the project Lemateki in September 2009 to conduct a nutritional survey of children in the suburbs of Dakar. During one year, Marion has been employed by the GRET and managed by IRD (Institut de recherche pour le Développement) to determine the nutritional status of the population. She has set foot in school on the outskirts of Dakar, organized the blood samples, measured and weighed 600 children, managed a large team of 20 investigators at home and various agents, participated in data analysis and scientific publication.

After this busy year of meetings and discoveries, Marion starts a VIE experience (Volunteer for International Experience) with danone.communities, still on the Lemateki project. Then, her mission is to implement the project on marketing issues and nutrition education and hygiene questions.