Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.
- Bill Drayton
We are still in the planning stages of our new project, Maya Jade, but I have to admit I can’t recall being more excited about a project. The basic idea behind the project is to take humanitarian expeditions down to Guatemala (other countries to follow) and allow the volunteers to participate on a wide range of service projects ranging from health and education to gardening and micro-enterprise. We have a million ideas flowing through our heads about how we want to tackle this new project. I am particularily excited about the potential use of the internet and social networking to grow support for our cause. The production of a top class website for Maya Jade is going to be crucial to our success. I envision expedition participants logging onto the website prior to the expedition and sending out customizable greeting cards to their friends and families inviting them to join or sponsor the expedition. Likewise after the expeditions I can envision them uploading their own photos and again sending out greeting cards - this time telling about their experience and once again encouraging them to get involved. I would hope past participants would be excited to promote the foundation via adding their trip photos to flickr, creating myspace and squidoo pages about their trip and even youtube videos. Of course, we would also have past participants have blogs on the website chronicling their trips. The website will also need to be very user friendly for donations and spell out customized monthly sponsorhip opportunities.
As I just read on Ashoka: “All ideas must be user-friendly, understandable, ethical and capable of engaging wide spread support.” I’m thinking that a cms (content management system) will be best for Maya Jade - not sure if wordpress or mod x is the right choice. Anyway, I’m just anxious to get moving with this new project and would love to hear people’s ideas for social entrepreneurship and how to leverage social networking to grow a cause.
