FeelGood: A new approach to fight hunger from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Have you heard of FeelGood? It’s an innovative nonprofit social enterprise, based on 27 college campuses, that offers a new way to make a difference in the fight against hunger.

The program transforms students social entrepreneurs and responsible global citizens. Its goal is simple: End world hunger in our lifetime. They do it one grilled cheese sandwich at a time. Founded in 2005, FeelGood empowers college students to run nonprofit delis on their campuses, specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches that are given away for a voluntary donation. At the delis, students develop business skills, launch effective educational campaigns and initiate dialogues about the root causes of and solutions to poverty.

Fully 100 percent of the profits the students raise are invested in organizations with a track record of eradicating extreme poverty and empowering self-reliance. And here’s a remarkable stat: Every $100 invested in FeelGood yields $120 for certified organizations working to end global hunger.

I ran into FeelGood’s founders, Kristin Walter and Talis Apud-Martinez, at the last Social Capital Markets conference. (The next one will be Oct. 4-6 in San Francisco).

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

You’ll be able to tell from the video that I knew little about FeelGood before our interview. And, one reason I’ve delayed posting this is that we had the most production challenges I’ve ever encountered in a shoot: jet planes and helicopters roaring overhead, an SUV that backed up and interrupted our shoot and a white balance that wouldn’t cooperate, all in the space of a few minutes.

But Kristin and Talis’s passion and dedication to a great cause are on full display, and I’ll be supporting FeelGood’s efforts as much as I can in the years ahead. Their goal is to take FeelGood to every U.S. college campus.

FeelGood in the Chase Community Giving Challenge on Facebook

Update: I just heard from Kristin, who says: “We are competing to win $20,000 today in the CHASE Community Giving Challenge on Facebook. Voting ends tonight and we need to recruit about 250 more votes in order to secure our win.”

Here are the steps:

(1) Visit: http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/760765873-feelgood

(2) Click “get started to vote” and then the “like” button (looks like a thumbs up) & allow access to the Chase Community Giving application.

(3) Click the green “VOTE” button.

(4) Once your vote goes through, the green “VOTE” button will turn into a “Share with friends” button. Please do!

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The story behind Invisible Children from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Laren Poole came about his cause, Invisible Children, completely by accident. He and two friends were documenting the refugee situation in Sudan six years ago when they crossed the border into northern Uganda and came upon a completely different conflict they didn’t know about: kids who were being abducted by the thousands and forced to fight in the bush as child soldiers.

The makeshift filmmaking crew stayed for two months and released the documentary Invisible Children. From there, the movie evolved into a global movement and nonprofit organization that is using the transformative power of story to change lives.

In this short video interview, conducted at Social Capital Markets 2009 in San Francisco, Poole talks about the organization’s effort to get governments around the world to stop Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel movement in Uganda and “the world’s worst criminal,” in Poole’s words, from forcing thousands of children into armed conflict.

Toward that end, Invisible Children has held a series of large rallies nationwide, organized a march on Washington, DC, and raised funds to build 10 high schools in Uganda. Throughout it all, they’ve used the tools of the Internet and social media to rally attention to the cause. “We’ve unleashed this young generation on this problem and documented what they’ve done about it,” he says.

One highlight of the awareness campaign came this past spring when Invisible Children staged a weeklong series of rescue events in 100 cities around the world. The crowds of mostly young people included 80,000 people in Chicago who stayed until, at the end, 500 hard-core supporters managed to earn Oprah Winfrey’s attention by camping outside her office building. “We held Oprah hostage,” Poole says, tongue in cheek, until she finally put them on her show on May 1.

Watch, embed or download the video interview on Vimeo

What motivates young supporters to get involved? “We break it down into a menu of things that they can do to make real change happen,” Poole says. We show them the results of the impact their contributions make, “and we add a bit of fun to it.”

You can join the Invisible Children cause on Facebook Causes — three quarters of a million people have done so.

One word about the video: I need to learn how to use the white balance settings on my Canon HV20 when shooting outdoors, since I don’t have powerful lighting gear to make up for the harsh shadows.

Related

• Embrace Disruption! Coverage of Laren Poole during his appearance at SoCap09 (earthsite)

• PETITION: Get Obama To Commit To Arrest Warlord Joseph Kony (huffingtonpost.com)

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Refugees revitalizing African communities from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

One of the most impressive people I met at the recent Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco was Kjersten Erickson, executive director of Forge, who founded the international NGO six years ago when she was a junior at Stanford University. Forge works with refugees and war-affected populations in Africa to bring some stability to their lives.

“We provide a support system to allow refugees and post-conflict communities to rebuild and revitalize themselves,” Kjersten says in this 4-minute video interview. Forge helps about 60,000 refugees a year by offering locally tailored solutions to help them achieve self-sufficiency. The Forge team helps runs libraries, solar-powered computer training centers, agricultural loan programs and income-generating activities that “contribute to a level of economic independence that has proven to be critical to break the cycle of war and poverty in Africa,” she says.

The Forge site lets you engage with specific refugee projects pr social entrepreneurs and lets you chart their progress with blog updates directly from the field or with unfiltered monthly progress reports. FORGE primarily targets assistance to youths, preschool students, women, the elderly and vulnerable in such countries as Zambia, Botswana, the Congo, Rwanda, Angola, Burundi, Sudan and elsewhere.

Watch, embed or download this video on Vimeo

Today the Jenzabar Foundation announced it was recognizing FORGE as the inaugural winner of the Social Media Leadership Award “due to their exceptional understanding and utilization of social media technologies to support their organization’s current and future endeavors.”

Apologies to Kjerstin, pronounced Sher-stin, whose pronunciation I muffed at the end.

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White House push for social innovation from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

By JD Lasica

At the Social Capital Markets conference this week, one highlight came in the opening keynote and panel discussion with Sonal Shah, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, who spoke about the federal government’s support for innovative, bottom-up social and community programs. Above is a 2 1/2-minute snippet. Some highlights of her talk:

• She talked about allocating resources toward high-impact models through the Social Innovation Fund that was part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The Foundation Center has the details.

• She underscored the need for working across sectors, with the federal government playing a role to bring together nonprofits, the private sector and government agencies.

• Shah also pointed to the need to identify tools to help foster a culture of social innovation. (Perhaps Socialbrite can play a role here.)

I had my hand raised throughout the Q&A session but wasn’t called on. I would have said: Many people in the audience no doubt have some ideas on how to move this agenda of social innovation forward. Aside from the handful of foundations and nonprofits in contact with your office, how can we do so? What’s the best public forum? Where should these conversations be taking place?

By Beth Kanter

I was fortunate to have a press pass to SoCap09 this week, which got me a front row seat for the keynote address by Sonal Shah and panel discussion with Andrew Wolk, Root Cause; Vanessa Kirsch, New Profit; and Carla Javits, REDF, moderated by Jeff Bradach, Bridgespan Group.

Sonal Shah gave an overview of the goals and strategies for the Office of Social Innovation. Nathaniel Whittemore of Change.org, who was sitting next to me, has a great write up of the keynote. Marco Puccia has notes here as well.

I live tweeted the key points.  The main themes that resonated for me:

• Don’t get distracted: Sonal Shah warned, “Don’t think about us as the ‘office that does cool stuff.’  She was warning against shiny object syndrome and used a different “s” word.
• Government and feedback loops – how can they take the field’s learnings and incorporate in theirs?
• Measurement is the major theme as the sector grows up. There was an emphasis on finding consistent or standardized quantitative benchmarks.
• However, there was also a plea not to make evaluation painful, collecting huges amount of data and not using it to improve a program.
• A different spin on the concept of mistakes and failure: “Mistakes should be considered failures if they fail to correct the problem. And if the correction creates new problems.”
• The need for some experimentation before a program or project rolls out or scales.  There is something beneath the language of “what works” that can kill innovation.
• That it is about effectiveness and quality, not growth

I learned a new term, “Hockey Stick Returns,” that colleague Nedra defined for me. The context is that many projects don’t offer this.

I attended a panel called “The Future of Social Innovation on the Web” This all-guy panel was facilitated by Dennis Whittle, Global Giving and featured Premal Shah, Kiva.org; Jonathan Greenblatt, Our Good Works;
Steve Newcomb, Virgance; and Ben Rattray, Change.org. I tweeted some of the key points.

After the session,  after waiting an hour for Premal Shah to be available for a quick interview, he graciously shared his thoughts on what Web 3.0 looks like as did Dennis Whittle. I also interviewed Shara Karasic , who was in the audience. Premal talked about the need for creating magic for the users and building in workflow software that was facilitated relationship building through the ladder of engagement.

Dennis introduced each panelist with a personal story of how they met. I loved what he said about  Premal Shah — that he wanted to apply for a job at Kiva after hearing him speak.   He set up the panel with a definition of Web 3.0 — it wasn’t about the real-time web or semantic web. He defined it this way: “If Web 1.0 is about one-way communication, and web 2.0 is about two-way communication, Web 3.0 is about building a bridge between two-way online communication and offline actions and impact.”

He asked each of the panelists to describe where they think the field is now.  Ben Rattray said: “The vast majority of social good platforms have failed because they have modeled social good platforms on commercial applications.  We assumed that if we  created a generic platform that  people would start their own actions. They don’t. It isn’t as easy to throw up an action on the web as it is to throw up a video. We faced challenges. The vision is to provide a platform for collective social action. It is so easy for people who care about an issue — it is easy to connect.   There must be catalytic organizations. If you build the platform, will spontaneous organizing happen?”  No! Synthesis of grassroots organization to channel social change.

He asked each of the panelists to discuss what they were most proud of in their project’s achievements. Jonathan Greenblatt of All for Good talked about the work they were doing to bring volunteer opportunities to Americans who want to serve. He also spoke about his accomplishments with Ethos Water.

Premal Shah talked about the importance of the user experience to create a compelling reason to give:

“Kiva is at the intersection of money and meaning. There is going to be a socially responsible investment. There is a third axis — it is not about ROI or social impact. It’s the user experience that drives adoption. Never underestimate something that is fun and has short feedback loops. If we want people to engage, it has to be easy, fun, and addictive. Return on experience versus investment.

Dennis also asked panelists to share some of the criticisms they’ve received along the way.

Several themes that came out in the discussion:

• The line between for-profit and nonprofit
• Balance between cooperation and competition
• Are there too many social entrepreneurs? If your idea isn’t high quality, why not work with someone else instead?
• Don’t give up!

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This week marks the launch of the Hub Bay Area, a co-working space that’s part of a global networks of Hubs.

If you’re not familiar with the Hub, you should be. In places like Toronto, London, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Cairo, Madrid, Stockholm, Bombay and elsewhere, social entrepreneurs, nonprofits and innovators have come together in 18 cities on five continents to collaborate and share resources. (Kevin Jones, who ran this week’s SoCap09 conference and is on the Hub Bay Area’s executive board, invited me to hold the Traveling Geeks’ tweetup at the Hub in London, but it was a bit too small for the gathering.)

The Bay Area has long had the venerable Citizen Space in San Francisco’s SOMA as well as Berkeley Coworking. Now the Hub brings coworking to another level. It’s located at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way near the Downtown Berkeley BART station and across the street from UC Berkeley. The brand new building is one the Bay Area’s most advanced green building, exceeding LEED Platinum certification standards. The building also houses many local social and environmental change organizations.

Here’s a more detailed description of the space, designed “to support innovation, optimize productivity, and supply an abundance of tools for working, meeting, learning, and connecting.” Here’s a short list of upcoming events. And here’s a wiki with more information about coworking.

Here’s how to join — today is the deadline for the Hub Berkeley accepting founding and charter members. There are plans afoot for a second Bay Area Hub location in San Francisco.

Congrats to Kevin, Alex Michel, Amy Benziger, Tim Freundlich, Rosa Lee Harden and others for making it happen.

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Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGOOD.tv

Last October, 630 people interested in advancing the social good through social entrepreurship flocked to San Francisco for the first Social Capital Markets conference (@socap09 on Twitter).

envisionGood.tv caught up with Kevin Jones, co-founder of the conference (and @kevindoylejones on Twitter) at The Hub in Berkeley, Calif., to get the lowdown on this year’s SoCap, which will bring together leading catalysts of positive social change for a day of learning, knowledge exchange, and connecting in San Francisco on Sept. 1–3.

For more info or to register, visit http://www.SocialCapitalMarkets.net.

Visit envisionGood.tv for more interviews with thought leaders in the social causes space.

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