Sasha Dichter is the Director of Business Development at Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund that invests in enterprises that serve the poor. In this role, he leads up capital raising globally for Acumen Fund, including executing a successful $100M capital raise, serving as the point person for Acumen Fund’s Partner community, and heading up global partnerships for Acumen Fund including global expansion. Sasha is a member of Acumen Fund’s leadership team and the author of the Manifesto for Nonprofit CEOs. He blogs about generosity,philanthropy and social change athttp://sashadichter.wordpress.com.
Before Acumen Fund, Sasha worked as Global Manager of Corporate Citizenship at GE Money, expanding financial offerings to underserved communities globally; and as a Senior Program Manager at IBM, spearheading the company’s corporate citizenship strategy and launching a leadership program for school administrators. Sasha began his career as a management consultant for Booz & Company in the telecommunications practice, based in New York but working primarily in Latin America and Europe. He’s also had stints with the microfinance group of Bank Rakyat Indonesia and with the venture-backed Navic Networks, recently acquired by Microsoft.
ploaded by TEDxTalks on Oct 12, 2010 TEDxKC talk synopsis: In our anxious world, we often protect ourselves by closing off parts of our lives that leave us feeling most vulnerable. Yet invulnerability has a price. When we knowingly or unknowingly numb ourselves to what we sense threatens us, we sacrifice an essential tool for navigating uncertain times -- joy. This talk will explore how and why fear and collective scarcity has profoundly dangerous consequences on how we live, love, parent, work and engage in relationships -- and how simple acts can restore our sense of purpose and meaning.
Speaker: Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work where she has spent the past 10 years studying courage, shame and authenticity. She is the Behavioral Health Scholar-in-Residence at the Council on Alcohol and Drugs and has written several books on her research.
www.brenebrown.com/welcome
A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE
by turnerbenelux
To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text "Push to add drama" invited people to use the button. And then we waited... Discover here what happened or visit http://www.tnt-tv.be for more info.
Later this year, or early next year, you will have the chance to buy shares in small, growing companies through a process known as crowd funding.
If
an offering seems interesting, tread carefully, do as much research as
you can and do not commit any money you are not willing to lose.
Crowd
funding is the process of raising money from a group of people. It is
currently used for a variety of purposes, from charitable efforts to
political campaigns.
Some websites, such as Prosper.com, allow businesses to access crowd funding to obtain loans.
Others,
like RocketHub, allow organizations to raise money for a certain goal
in exchange for rewards such as a music album or a book. (Crowd funding is also called crowd financing.)
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (aka the JOBS Act) turns crowd funding into a source of venture capital.
The act, which President Obama signed in to law today, authorizes companies to sell shares via crowd funding. Specifically,
companies can sell up to $1 million worth of shares to just about any
investor during a 12-month period, regardless of an investor’s
financial resources. This is a very significant change. Existing regulations limit such equity offerings to accredited investors.
To
qualify as an accredited investor, an investor has to have individual
(or joint) net worth in excess of $1 million, excluding the value of
his primary residence, or a minimum annual income of $200,000 ($300,000
for a couple) for each of the past two years and a reasonable
expectation of this year’s income matching or exceeding those levels.
The idea is that affluent investors have the financial risk tolerance to
participate in stock offerings for non-publicly traded companies.
The JOBS Act replaces these rules.
It
allows any investor to participate in a private equity offering as
long as they don’t commit more than $2,000 or 5% of their annual income
or net worth, if either annual income or net worth is less than
$100,000, to a single non-publicly traded company.
(Nothing in the bill bars them from participating in offerings for other companies, however.)
An
investor merely has to attest that he understands the risks involved
of investing in a start-up and the risks of illiquidity (strict
restrictions are placed on the transfer of shares) and has read the
investor education information. Note that there is no requirement that the investor actually read the material, only that he give his word that he has.
Now that I’ve given you some background, read the next paragraph very carefully.
Companies
seeking to raise less than $100,000 merely have to have their
principal executive officer certify that the financial statements are
correct.
Companies seeking to raise between $100,000 and $500,000
are required to have a public accountant review the financial
statements.
Audited financial statements are not required unless the offering amount is above $500,000.
All companies are required to provide investors with the results of operations “not less than annually.”
In very simple
terms, any investor can tie up his money in a risky start-up company
that has no public market for its shares and that may not have had an
independent accountant audit the financial statements.
This is a recipe for losing money.
I
have no problems with a person funding a business he believes will be
successful, if he fully understands the risks of the investment and has
the financial risk tolerance to make the investment.
My concern is that the Internet opens up crowd funding to affinity, social networks and pure hype.
More importantly, it will play off of people’s greed—their desire to get in on the ground floor of the next Facebook (FB).
And
just as there were people who spent way too much money on Mega
Millions lottery tickets last week, there will be people who spend more
they than should on crowd-funded investments.
Will crowd funding create some very successful companies that make a lot of money for their early investors? Possibly.
Will
a far larger number of people lose money because of their
crowd-funding-related investments? Yes. Most start up companies never
make it to the IPO stage.
Participate in crowd funding if there is a business you believe in.
But
only do so after you have read the prospectus and when you have money
that you are financially and emotionally capable of losing.
Everyone doesn't have advocates telling the world how bad M.S. is to live with day in and day out knowing you are unlikely to get any better because the disease is progressive and so far there is no cure.I quoted some of Ms. Ward's blog to echo her kind words.
M.S. is a disease of fatigue and quiet suffering but you cannot afford negative thoughts.Maintain an attitude of hope, manage your energy by having priorities and stay positive. Avoid self-pity.
Like Ann Romney( wife of Mitt the Presidential candidate) , Vicky Ward's sister suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.
"Every time I've watched Ann Romney up there on that podium late at night with her husband, all that energy flowing during the Primaries, I am amazed.
Because I know how tough it is for people who suffer from MS to manage their energy. I know that the later in the day it gets, the harder it is for them -- and no matter how rich you are, there is no magic bullet to make you feel better or the weakness go away.
Drugs can help but at the end of the day you have to manage your days and your time so you do not get overtired. Ann Romney has said she copes very well with a mixture of Eastern and Western medicines -- and she looks great.
The article provided a useful reference to an alternative treatment group:
Scott Johnson, the CEO and founder of the Myelin Repair Foundation -- a non-profit organization looking at alternative treatments for the disease, has had MS for 36 years. He said, "MS is a secret disease. Far more people have it than is documented."
Canadians should educate themselves about how they can help fight human trafficking and child slavery, international development organization World Vision says.
The group is launching a three-year campaign against child slavery, including human trafficking, which they say overlaps with slavery because children are often trafficked into the dangerous, degrading or dirty jobs that are the subject of the campaign.
The push comes on the heels of the sentencing of Ferenc Domotor, the leader of the biggest proven human trafficking ring in the country's history. Domotor was sentenced to nine years in prison for luring Hungarian men to Canada to work from dawn to dusk in construction in return for table scraps.
World Vision’s campaign focuses on children, and isn't limited to Canada. It cites a UNICEF estimate that 126 million child labourers worldwide do dangerous work and an International Labour Organization estimate that approximately 1.2 million children are trafficked for labour or sexual exploitation at any given time, representing half of the people trafficked worldwide.
And for every trafficking victim forced into prostitution, which gets the bulk of the media attention, nine others are forced into work in places like factories, sweatshops, boats, and farms.
"Child labour is a problem that affects millions of kids around the world," said Carleen McGuinty, a child protection specialist at World Vision.
"Our experience has shown that an NGO [non-governmental organization] can't do it on its own, consumers can't do it on their own, governments can't do it on their own, we all need to be working together."
"We need more than laws and more than legislation."
The Conservatives promised in their 2011 election platform to develop a national action plan to combat human trafficking. McGuinty says one element of World Vision's campaign is a petition asking the government to address the needs of children and to work to stop children from being trafficked in the first place.
The government can play a crucial role in its international work, McGuinty says.
The Canadian International Development Agency, already working in the field in poor countries, can work with labour organizations to make sure workers are educated about their rights and that those rights are enforced.....
(Song: Window by The Album Leaf) One of the most inspirational speeches in recorded history was given by a silent comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin.
If you like what you see please share the video any way you can and pass the message on.
There are many translations of this speech, if you watch it on YouTube the translations are listed below.
"As
a whole, humanity has achieved unparalleled prosperity; great strides
are being made to reduce global poverty; and technological advances are
revolutionizing our lives, stamping out diseases, and transforming
communication.”
Despite
many successes in creating a more integrated and stable global
economy, a new report by the United Nations Secretary-General’s
High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability
recognizes
the current global order’s failure, even inability, to implement the
drastic changes needed for true “sustainability.”
The Panel’s report presents a vision for a “sustainable planet, just society, and growing economy,”
as well as 56 policy recommendations for realizing that goal. It is
arguably the most prominent international call for a radical redesign
of the global economy ever issued.
But, for all of its rich content, Resilient People, Resilient Planet is short on concrete, practical solutions.
Its
most valuable short-term recommendation – the replacement of current
development indicators (GDP or variants thereof) with more
comprehensive, inclusive metrics for wealth – seems tacked on almost as an afterthought.
Without quick, decisive international action to prioritize sustainability over the status quo, the report risks suffering the fate of its 1987 predecessor, the pioneering Brundtland Report, which introduced the concept of sustainability, similarly called for a paradigm shift, and was then ignored.
Resilient People, Resilient Planet opens by paraphrasing Charles Dickens: the world today is
“experiencing the best of times, and the worst of times.”
As
a whole, humanity has achieved unparalleled prosperity; great strides
are being made to reduce global poverty; and technological advances are
revolutionizing our lives, stamping out diseases, and transforming
communication.
On the other hand, inequality remains stubbornly high, and is increasing in many countries.
Short-term
political and economic strategies are driving consumerism and debt,
which, together with global population growth – set to reach nearly
nine billion by 2040 – is subjecting the natural environment to growing
stress.
By
2030, notes the Panel, “the world will need at least 50% more food,
45% more energy, and 30% more water – all at a time when environmental
limits are threatening supply.”
Despite
significant advances in the past 25 years, humanity has failed to
conserve resources, safeguard natural ecosystems, or otherwise ensure
its own long-term viability.
Can a bureaucratic report – however powerful – create change?
Will the world now rally, unlike in 1987, to the Panel’s call to “transform the global economy”?
In fact, perhaps real action is born of crisis itself. As the Panel points out,it has never been clearer that
we need a paradigm shift to achieve truly sustainable global development.
The
2010 Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress echoed the current consensus among
social scientists that
we are mismeasuring our lives by using per capita GDP as a yardstick for progress.
We need new indicators that tell us if we are destroying the productive base that supports our well-being.
...working to find these indicators for its “Inclusive Wealth Report” (IWR), which proposes an approach to sustainability based on natural, manufactured, human, and social capital. ...to
provide a comprehensive analysis of the different components of wealth
by country, their links to economic development and human well-being,
and policies that are based on social management of these assets.
The
first IWR, which focuses on 20 countries worldwide, will be officially
launched at the upcoming Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro.
Preliminary findings will be presented during the Planet under Pressure Conference in London in late March.
The IWR represents a crucial first step in transforming the global economic paradigm, by
ensuring that we have the correct information with which to assess our
economic development and well-being – and to reassess our needs and
goals.
While it is not intended as a universal indicator for sustainability, it does offer a framework for dialogue with multiple constituencies from the environmental, social, and economic fields.
The situation is critical.
As Resilient People, Resilient Planet aptly puts it, “tinkering around the margins” will no longer suffice – a warning to those counting on renewable-energy technologies and a green economy to solve our problems.
The Panel has revived the call for a far-reaching change in the global economic system.
ABOUT Partha Dasgupta
Partha Dasgupta is Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. His most recent book is
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” reads a famous misquote attributed to Ben Franklin. While beer lovers merely wish he said something to this effect (in reality, he uttered something similar about wine), the sentiment has seemed true for centuries. So it may seem ironic that during Turkmenistan’s “Happiness Week,” the government has banned alcohol.
Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has declared the first week in April to be a celebration of the “era of power and happiness” across the Central Asian nation, hosting a series of public shows and sporting events to show off the country’s prowess. And with that, shopkeepers have been ordered to remove all beer and liquor from their shelves.
To be fair, the official name of the celebration is the “Week of Health and Happiness,” and alcohol fits only one of those categories. The former Soviet republic devotes this week each year to promote personal fitness and well-being. This year, the title has been expanded to include the “happiness” moniker. It’s an ostentatious celebration that has seen authoritarian president Berdymukhamedov take a front-and-center role, reportedly running three miles (five kilometers) to get to a cabinet meeting.
Oh, sure, I guess it’s possible that the seal pup is just going “hey, free toboggan.” But let’s all agree to interpret this as a beautiful moment of interspecies generosity.
Thirty-three years ago, I watched as a culture that had been sealed off from the rest of the world was suddenly thrown open to economic development. Witnessing the impact of the modern world on an ancient culture gave me insights into how economic globalisation creates feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, particularly in the young, and how those psychological pressures are helping to spread the global consumer culture. Since that time I have been promoting the rebuilding of community and local economies as the foundation of an ‘Economics of Happiness’.
When I first arrived in Ladakh or “Little Tibet”, a region high on the Tibetan plateau, it was still largely unaffected by either colonialism or the global economy. For political reasons, the region had been isolated for many centuries, both geographically and culturally. During several years of living amongst the Ladakhis, I found them to be the most contented and happy people I had ever encountered. Their sense of self-worth was deep and solid; smiles and laughter were their constant companions. Then in 1975, the Indian government abruptly opened Ladakh to imported food and consumer goods, to tourism and the global media, to western education and other trappings of the ‘development’ process. Romanticised impressions of the West gleaned from media, advertising and fleeting encounters with tourists had an immediate and profound impact on the Ladakhis. The sanitised and glamorised images of the urban consumer culture created the illusion that people outside Ladakh enjoyed infinite wealth and leisure. By contrast, working in the fields and providing for one's own needs seemed backward and primitive. Suddenly, everything from their food and clothing to their houses and language seemed inferior. The young were particularly affected, quickly succumbing to a sense of insecurity and self-rejection. The use of a dangerous skin-lightening cream called "Fair and Lovely" became widespread, symbolising the newly-created need to imitate the distant role models – western, urban, blonde – provided by the media.
Over the past three decades, I have studied this process in numerous cultures around the world and discovered that we are all victims of these same psychological pressures. In virtually every industrialised country, including the US, UK, Australia, France and Japan, there is now what is described as an epidemic of depression. In Japan, it is estimated that one million youths refuse to leave their bedrooms – sometimes for decades – in a phenomenon known as “Hikikomori.” In the US, a growing proportion of young girls are so deeply insecure about their appearance they fall victim to anorexia and bulimia, or undergo expensive cosmetic surgery.
Why is this happening? Too often these signs of breakdown are seen as ‘normal’: we assume that depression is a universal affliction, that children are by nature insecure about their appearance, that greed, acquisitiveness, and competition are innate to the human condition. What we fail to consider are the billions of dollars spent by marketers targeting children as young as two, with a goal of instilling the belief that material possessions will ensure them the love and appreciation they crave.
As global media reaches into the most remote parts of the planet, the underlying message is: "if you want to be seen, heard, appreciated and loved you must have the right running shoes, the most fashionable jeans, the latest toys and gadgets”. But the reality is that consumption leads to greater competition and envy, leaving children more isolated, insecure, and unhappy, thereby fuelling still more frantic consumption in a vicious cycle. In this way, the global consumer culture taps into the fundamental human need for love and twists it into insatiable greed.
Today, more and more people are waking up to fact that, because of its environmental costs, an economic model based on endless consumption is simply unsustainable. But because there is far less understanding of the social and psychological costs of the consumer culture, most believe that making the changes necessary to save the environment will entail great sacrifice. Once we realise that oil-dependent global growth is not only responsible for climate change and other environmental crises, but also for increased stress, anxiety and social breakdown, then it becomes clear that the steps we need to take to heal the planet are the same as those needed to heal ourselves: both require reducing the scale of the economy – in other words localising rather than continuing to globalise economic activity. My sense from interviewing people in four continents is that this realisation is already growing, and has the potential to spread like wildfire.
Economic localisation means bringing economic activity closer to home – supporting local economies and communities rather than huge, distant corporations. Instead of a global economy based on sweatshop in the South, stressed-out two-earner families in the North, and a handful of billionaire elites in both, localisation means a smaller gap between rich and poor and closer contact between producers and consumers. This translates into greater social cohesion : a recent study found that shoppers at farmers’ markets had ten times more conversations than people in supermarkets.
And community is a key ingredient in happiness. Almost universally, research confirms that feeling connected to others is a fundamental human need. Local, community-based economies are also crucial for the well-being of our children, providing them with living role models and a healthy sense of identity. Recent childhood development research demonstrates the importance, in the early years of life, of learning about who we are in relation to parents, siblings, and the larger community. These are real role models, unlike the artificial stereotypes found in the media.
A deep connection with nature is similarly fundamental to our well-being. Author Richard Louv has even coined the expression ‘nature deficit disorder’ to describe what is happening to children deprived of contact with the living world. The therapeutic benefits of contact with nature, meanwhile, are becoming ever more clear. A recent UK study showed that 90 percent of people suffering from depression experience an increase in self-esteem after a walk in a park. After a visit to a shopping centre, on the other hand, 44 percent feel a decrease in self-esteem and 22 percent feel more depressed. Considering that over 31 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were handed out in the UK last year, this is a crucial finding.
Despite the enormity of the crises we face, turning towards the more community-based, localised economies represents a powerful solution multiplier. As Kali Wendorf, editor of Kindred magazine, says, “the way forward is actually quite simple: it’s more time with each other, more time in nature, more time in collective situations that give us a sense of community, like farmers’ markets, for example, or developing a relationship with the corner shop where you get your fruits and vegetables. It’s not going back to the Stone Age. It’s just getting back to that foundation of connection again.”
Efforts to localise economies are happening at the grassroots all over the world, and bringing with them a sense of well-being. A young man who started an urban garden in Detroit, one of America’s most blighted cities, told us, “I’ve lived in this community over 35 years and people I’d never met came up and talked to me when we started this project. We found that it reconnects us with the people around us, it makes community a reality”. Another young gardener in Detroit put it this way: “Everything just feels better to people when there is something growing.”
Global warming and the end of cheap oil demand a fundamental shift in the way that we live. The choice is ours. We can continue down the path of economic globalisation, which at the very least will create greater human suffering and environmental problems, and at worst, threatens our very survival. Or, through localisation, we can begin to rebuild our communities and local economies, the foundations of sustainability and happiness.
Helena Norberg-Hodge is an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the localisation movement. She is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). Based in the US and UK, with subsidiaries in Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Ladakh, ISEC's mission is to examine the root causes of our social and environmental crises, while promoting more sustainable and equitable patterns of living in both North and South. Its activities include The Ladakh Project, a Local Food program and Global to Local Outreach.She is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, based on her first-hand experience of the effects of conventional development in Ladakh. Ancient Futures has been described as an "inspirational classic" by the London Times and together with a film of the same title, it has been translated into 42 languages. A new edition will be published in 2009 by Random House. She is also co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home and From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. In 1986, she received the Right Livelihood Award, or the "Alternative Nobel Prize" as recognition for her work in Ladakh
by TEDtalksDirector on Sep 7, 2010http://www.ted.com Indian education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
http://www.ted.com As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have. available on TED.com
If you have questions or comments about this or other TED videos, please go to http://support.ted.com
* Reuters is not responsible for the content in this press release.
Tue Apr 3, 2012 2:15am EDT
OUTOTEC OYJ PRESS RELEASE, APRIL 3, 2012 AT 9.15 AM
Outotec publishes its sustainability report 2011
Outotec has published its sustainability report 2011, which is the company's second report based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. The report conforms to Application Level B+ and is third-party assured by Ecobio Ltd. The report describes Outotec's approach to sustainability, performance and achievements in 2011 as well as future targets and is an update of the 2010 report. Key achievements include new global health and safety reporting, more detailed social data and high proportion of Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) in 2011 order intake.
"Outotec's most significant impact on sustainability occurs indirectly through our customers' operations. With eco-efficient solutions, it is possible to reduce the environmental impact of the industry, at the same time increasing welfare. The annual emissions avoided by the metallurgical industry through use of five Outotec technologies amounted to 4.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalency in 2011. I am very proud that as much as 87 percent of our order intake for 2011 was categorized as Environmental Goods and Services under the OECD classification. I am also pleased that in 2011 we progressed well in many other areas of our sustainability agenda. We intend to further improve our performance and reporting and thus demonstrate our commitment to good governance, responsible business practices and transparency", says Outotec CEO Pertti Korhonen.
The digital count would put Canada near the top of the heap in terms of ebook reading, count organizers said in a news release, citing a January 2012 presentation titled
Global Assessment of E-Book Markets, which ranked the top three ebook reading countries: United States at 20-per-cent penetration, South Korea at 14.5 per cent and the United Kingdom at seven per cent.