Wr2 Final

The mission of College 8 is to inspire action on the environment to improve the lives of people and nature. This project allows you to explore how you might use social entrepreneur methods to solve a specific environmental problem. A social entrepreneur essentially uses economic forces to improve life, as opposed to their traditional role of damaging the planet by extracting resources, transforming them into goods, which are then disposed of in ways that are wasteful if not downright harmful. Social entrepreneurship is a new concept, but it weaves together strands that have been around for a long time. It's about forging social relationships and organizing people, but also attempts to work with the market and leverages the power of the Internet.

For more information including examples, see Social Entrepreneur page. Anita Roddick, founder of the The Body Shop was an early and inspirational example, as well as the founder of the Grammen microloan bank, Muhammad Yunus. You can find other examples on Eco-Heroes page. TEDtalks also feature quite a number of such folk as well, including Jessica Jackley (Kiva.org), the hundred dollar laptop, Jacqueline Novogratz You can search TEDtalks search here

After your group agrees on a topic and gets some background information on it, you'll want to find a social entrepreneur who is already working on it or a related issue and evaluate their chance of success. You present this in poster session. Based on this, you can create your own plan.