Announcing a New Feature: Entrepreneurs on the Verge

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published February 24, 2009 @ 10:18AM PT

Forward momentum in Kampala, Uganda

Across the globe, innovators are putting their creativity and energy towards entrepreneurial solutions to global problems. Whether it's better aligning market interests to provide low-cost disease treatment, creating new contexts for youth from different backgrounds to serve and learn with one another, or building new tools for a mobilized anti-genocide constituency, social entrepreneurs are pushing us to experiment with new ways to solve the world's most pressing problems.

But where do the social entrepreneurs live and where do they come from? For every Echoing Green or Draper Richards Fellow, there are a hundred dreamers brainstorming, building, and engaging their communities and constituencies in new ways. These are the folks on the front-lines, often working two jobs and living grant to grant because of their commitment to their vision for a better world.

Their experiences contain incredible lessons for social entrepreneurs and changemakers everywhere. How do we support and nurture their ideas and organizations? How do we help them employ assessment systems to know whether they're achieving their desidred impact? How do make it easier for high-potential organizations to get the resources they need to become great?

For the next six months, we'll be following the stories of four of these entrepreneurs on the verge. We'll hear about success, failure, and everything in between. We'll read both of inspiration and crushing real world pressure.

Your four hosts for this journey are working across the social spectrum and around the world. Susannah Cunningham is the founder of the Iraqi Information Office which works to provide tailored services for Iraqi asylum seekers in Cairo Egypt. Josh Nesbit is one of the founders of FrontlineSMS:Medic, a new mobile tool to dramatically improve rural community health worker's ability to care for patients. Halle Butvin runs One Mango Tree, a fair trade organization that partners with tailors in northern Uganda to open up new economic opportunities for women affected by the longest running war in Africa. Jacob Elster's company Crop to Cup is putting the farmer back at the center of your cup of coffee by providing not only a high-quality fair trade product, but the ability to communicate directly with the grower.

They share many things - an America perspective working in an adopted arena, access to at least modest support by virtue of their social networks, and a passionate commitment to their organizations. But they also represent difference. While some are building double bottom line businesses, others are focused on building nonprofit organizations equipped to tackle systemic inequity.

The point of this exploration is not to try to suggest that this Entrepreneurs on the Verge column demonstrates the full spectrum of the social entrepreneur's experience, or to pretend that every voice here is represented. The vast majority of the world's social entrepreneurs, for example, are locals innovating and iterating for their own community, without access to communication tools like blogs.

The point is instead to learn what we can from the lived experience of a handful of those on the front lines of social change. The point is to get a glimpse of what it means to be a Josh, or Susannah, or Jacob, or Halle as they build organizations that by their existence defy our all-too-pernicious cynicism and vindicate a belief in the possibility of a better tomorrow.

Entrepreneurs on the Verge post list:

Feb 24th - "Doing Mobile Health Right" by Josh Nesbit

Feb 26th - "Reverse Exodus? Seeking Refuge in Cairo" by Susannah Cunningham

March 3 - "One Mango Tree: A Fair Trade Sapling" by Halle Butvin

March 10th - "Cell Phone Spring Break 2009 - Uganda" by Josh Nesbit