Remember our call for projects on Facebook, Social Business Youngsters? Our winner is Nazia Zebin and her team from Bangladesh. Their project? The Bookworm Revolution, a project that aims at helping young children in rural areas to develop literacy competences, by giving them access to adapted books to their young age.

But, better than us, Nazia tells you her story.

Throughout the world, education has been established as the key to good jobs and high incomes. A few recent researches on education have proved that scholarly culture – the way of life in homes where books are numerous, esteemed, read, and enjoyed- is important for holistic education. The scholarly culture hypothesis holds that reading provides cognitive skills that enhance educational attainment, a cultural toolkit. A home in which books are an integral part of the way of life will encourage children to read for pleasure, thereby providing them with information, vocabulary, imaginative richness, and wide horizons.

KerstinHumberg is Business Consultant with a leading international management consultancy for several years. During her academic career in geography, Kerstin has conducted researches about the impact of social business in the fight against poverty. For three years, she traveled on the field, in Bangladesh, many times, to study Grameen joint ventures, including Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. The result of her work has been published in a book, « Poverty Reduction trhough Social Business ? ».

We are lucky because she allowed us to publish two chapters :

• Chapter 2 : « Mapping the field : social business and relevant contexts »
• And Chapter 7 (a GDFL case) : « Grameen Danone Foods Ltd. : Fortified Yoghurt for the Poor ».

Finally, for those who wish to go further, devour the bibliography of this academic research that lays the groundwork for a debate about the impact of social business. Happy reading!

Since 2008, danone.communities organizes every year a major conference in Paris, called the General Community Meeting, with Professor Yunus and many pioneers from the social business area. The aim is to promote social business, to share the avdancements on projects initiated by danone.communities and connect thousands of fans and experts. This evening has gained momentum progressively : 800 participants in 2008 at the Bibliothèque Nationale, 1200 people in 2009 at the Casino deParis, 1500 people in 2010 and 2000 people in 2011 at the Carrousel du Louvre...

Last Tuesday, it's on the hills of the Haute-Savoie that danone.communities that carried its little sticks Moss Tekki (from the project Lemateki) for a taste sampling to other employees of Danone.

Several times a year, Danone holds a Campus, a corporate university that brings together about 300 people of all nationalities. So we jumped at the chance to meet them and tell them about danone.communities and our GCM Tour 2012. Special thanks to all the Campus Team for gaving us this opportunity and for helping us to make it real.
 

So it's on my little tasting booth that I could answer all the questions from my international colleagues! Opinions were divided on the flavors of Moss Tekki (I proposed the flavors vanilla, bissap and peanut) because the ingredients are local (Senegal) and the texture matches the food tastes of young children between 5 and 8 years, but most Danoners embarked on this tasting playing the game until the end because it is the flavor "bissap" that was chosen most often.

One of the next Danone Campus will be held in Prague in June and will bring together as many Danoners. The subject will focus on social business and we will have another opportunity to share the energy of our movement with others!

Below are some pictures of the stand (morning and afternoon)

Created with flickr slideshow.

Livelihoods: what is it?

Livelihoods is a unique investment fund whose objective is to restore carbon credits with high societal value to its partners investors. Livelihoods raises funds from its investors and reinvests them into large-scale projects to generate long-term viability. The Fund seeks to find the best balance between the financial value of these credits and the value created for local communities.

The mechanism can be summed up as follows: through the carbon economy, the fund contributes to ecosystem restoration and development of the local economy and thus to the fight against poverty in countries where it invests. Hundreds of thousands of families can contribute to the restoration of their ecosystem while improving their food income.

Livelihoods par Livelihoods

Who are the initiators and partners of Livelihoods?

Fortune Magazine publishes many ranks each year. The one we are the most interested in today is “12 Greatest Entrepreneurs of Our Time”, which we are particularly proud of because it includes Professor Yunus, President of danone.communities board. Pr. Yunus is mentioned besides many over innovative persons like Steve Jobs from Apple, Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook… The Top 12 includes 10 American people, an Indian one and Yunus, who is from Bangladesh, as many people know. All the ranked persons are presented through a little story, in an article named "From dreamers to doers" (read the story of Yunus here). A mantra to keep in mind ?

Before reading the reasons why Pr. Yunus has been chosen to be part of the rank.(source DailyStar), we just would like to let you know that Pr. YUnus will be with us in Paris, 15th May for our annual Global Communities Meeting Tour 2012. More details here.

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!).