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.
Wednesday, danone.communities attended the discussion "How to organize access to water for all? ", organized by the French Agency for Development and Odissée (Organization of the Dialogue and Social Intelligence in the Company and the Company). The place, the College des Bernardins, could not be more inspiring to get together and discuss issues, brakes and actions to increase access to safe drinking water in developing countries.
Two experts punctuated the discussion : Emmanuel Poilane, Director of the Fondation France Libertés and Maurice Bernard, head of the Water and Sanitation Division of the AFD.
Great innovation could come from unusual combination of ideas. Setting up a movement for social business requires specific conditions. Let’s share, for example, the ingredients that the AperoSocEnt and Hold-Ups MakeSens are gathering to lead their communities. (translation helped by google translate ; sorry for the potential errors)
One of the danone.communities’ missions is to participate in the promotion of Social Business. More precisely, we strive to create a network of people interested in new settings between the economic and social issues and then help them to build impactful projects. To take a mechanical image, promote the best arrangement of many linchpin (in the sense « linchpin » from Seth Godin, emphasizing the creative potential of all of us: we are no longer bolts ... but have the power to specific and inventive wheels) to generate a new driving force ... toward a new capitalism !
In May, danone.communities has launched the first Facebook application dedicated to Danoners. Its objective was to get people to make people discover more about social innovation inside Danone and to give them the chance to go to Bangladesh, to live concretly, the experience of the project Grameen Danone.
The principle was simple: players had to answer 11 questions about social innovation. You also have to invite friends and to fill up informations to gain points. The more they got points, the more they had the chance to be the winner at the random draw that took place July the 12th.
The winner is Vit Vojtech, our colleage from Czech Republic. He will take off to Dhaka with me in October. We will share our experience with you !
All the participants will receive an email with an award for being part of this first innovative experience on Facebook. But first of all, discover the rights answers to the quiz (and discover many things from Danone as well).
What is Danone’s mission ?
o To bring health to as many people as possible
o To make your life more tasty
o To give your stomach good habits
The first letters of the key behaviours of Danoners form the acronym CODE. What does the “O” stand for ?
Last week, our team had the chance to participate in a major event of 2011:
Ashoka, as a pioneer and leader in the field of social entrepreneurship, has supported about 3,000 social entrepreneurs over the last 30 years. More than 1,000 people gathered on June 21-22 to celebrate this great anniversary.
5 years ago, Pr.Yunus formalized the concept of Social Busines in his book "Creating a World Without Poverty." Today, the theory is embodied in concrete actions around the world. June 28th, we celebrated the 2nd international edition of the Social Business Day: from Japan to Peru, fromChina to Senegal, "changemakers" get connected to the internet, presented their initiatives and opened conversations.
For the first time within danone.communities, we were able to take this opportunity to launch "live television broadcasts" in which holders of some projects we support shared their actions with internet users. A big thank you especially to Cecilia Beatrice Chanrith, Bora, Leakhena, Kearoth, Samneang, Rothan, Chhuanna, Kounthy, Abureth, Veasna, Aurélie, Lo, Yves Adrien, Bagore, William, ...
Find mini-presentations of these projects here (Nutrigo, 1001 Fountains, Isomir, Naandi and La Laiterie du Berger).
Here is a collection of some great memories from that day. We hope that the attendees learned many things about the Social Business. We have identified many areas to improve the techniques of these "live video chat": we should start again with a better rendering. With which project team would you be particularly interested to exchange? (find extra photos here and video here).
As an end, a great suprise from our friends at Nutrigo - a nice video about this incredible project :
On April 28th, the danone.communities team was delighted to share its progress and challenges with a high quality audience: project managers, partners, contributors, Danoners, entrepreneurs, students, fans or just curious.
Thank you to those who responded to our satisfaction survey: your feedback and ideas for improvement are always welcome to help us design meetings ever closer to your expectations.
Here are some key figures showing the positive feedbacks we received regarding the form as well as the content of the event:
- More than 2,300 registrants, including 40% of newcomers, more than 800 organizations represented, 350 students, 150 entrepreneurs, 20% of Danone employees, etc.
- 1,300 people have watched the GCM live on the Internet in 20 different countries
- 10% of participants completed the satisfaction survey, among which over 90% have enjoyed or greatly appreciated the evening
- Nearly half of respondents say they now want to act in 2011 to contribute to projects of social business
On Thursday, you were 2000 at the Carrousel du Louvre, to follow the good progress of social business and danone.communities.
Online, you were almost 1 300 to attend and comment the GCM from 20 different countries. We are very pleased to have attracted so much attention and as positive as inspirational messages.
To go further in the discussion, here is a list of sources with which you can deepen the projects and the thematic around them.
1. "Access to drinking water projects by and for communities" : for the first roundtable, Emmanuel Marchant, Managing Director danone.communities, has moderated the discussion between Manoj Kumar, founder and Naandi and Xochilt Galvez Ruiz, founder and Director of High Tech Services, founder of Porvenir, and "carrier" of the project El Alberto, Mexico.
As part of the annual profit-sharing campaign, danone.communities visited several French Danone centers to present its mutual fund and social businesses, partly supported thanks to the employee savings.
Late May 2011, the total assets were of 68.4 million euros, nearly half of which coming from Danone and its employees.
Between March and April, part of the danone.communities team went to meet employees at the Carasso Center (R&D in Palaiseau), St Ouen and Danone Place in Paris.
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