Alvin’s Guide to Good Business

The 8-part BBC World News series on social entrepreneurs, Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, wraps up this week with a look at Kiva, led by 2008 Skoll social entrepreneurs Matt Flannery and Premal Shah.  Kiva has been at the forefront of online peer-to-peer microlending, with nearly $130 million in loans to date going from some 695,000 lenders to 328,000 small entrepreneurs around the world.  The episode details Kiva’s work in Tanzania, with presenter Alvin Hall checking up on the results of a microloan he makes through Kiva.  You can read a BBC Online companion article.  If you get BBC World News via broadcast, you can check to see when the episode will air over the next week.

Watch the episode below, then head to Kiva.org to make your own loan.  It’s a great way to create a growing pool of development finance for entrepreneurial individuals facing daunting economic challenges who need some seed money to get a business going.

The ongoing BBC World News series on social entrepreneurs, Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, features Camfed this week.  Led by 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur Ann Cotton, Camfed uses an innovative community-based approach to girls education, supporting girls from elementary school through to adulthood.  Camfed is a great story of impact.  Since 1993, Camfed has improved the school environment for over 1,065,000 children, provided scholarships for 42,000 girls to go to high school, trained over 4,000 teacher mentors and helped over 750 young women go to college. Graduates of the Camfed program are now becoming sponsors of the next generation of girls, creating a self-reinforcing mechanism that will only get stronger over time.

If you receive BBC World News, you can see the broadcast schedule. There’s a companion story to the broadcast on BBC Online.

Camfed has a page related to the broadcast where you can find out about ways to get involved in their work. 

 Friends International, founded by 2007 social entrepreneur Sebastien Marot, is the subject of this week’s episode of Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, the 8-part series running on BBC World News that started last month. Friends International, which works in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Honduras, Mexico, Egypt and Myanmar, works with marginalized youth, particularly street children, to help them become productive and independent members of their communities.  Among other things, Friends International provides training and creates businesses, ranging from restaurants to beauty salons to retail stores, staffed by former street children.

Friends International has a variety of ways for you to get involved, from volunteering to donating to connecting on Facebook.

Partners in Health, co-founded by 2008 Skoll social entrepreneur Paul Farmer, is featured in this week’s episode of “Alvin’s Guide to Good Business,” an 8- week series on social entrepreneurs on BBC World News.  Partners in Health pioneered a model of community-based care used successfully, among other things, to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and to deliver antiretroviral therapy for AIDS patients in extremely poor communities.  Partners in Health has also been instrumental in tackling health challenges following the Haiti earthquake.  If you get the BBC World News, you can see the broadcast schedule.  You can read a companion piece about Partners in Health on the BBC online.

Paul and Partner’s in Health are very much in the news currently because of Haiti and we encourage you to support their efforts there.  This episode, which focuses on Partners in Health’s work in Malawi, shows the reach of their model.  Information on the episode, including a way to match donations to help the Malawi operation, is available on the Partners site.

The fourth episode of the BBC World News series on social entrepreneurs features the heroic rats of Apopo, founded by 2009 Skoll social entrepreneur Bart Weetjens.  These HeroRats are trained to detect landmines and tuberculosis using their sense of smell.  The 8-part series, called Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, is looking at social entrepreneurs doing innovative work around the globe.  BBC World News online has an companion article on HeroRats.   If you are in a market where you receive BBC World News, you can check out the broadcast schedule for the episode.

Check out the video below, and get involved.  Adopt a rat, pass the story along via your blog and twitter feeds, friend HeroRATS on Facebook.

The third episode of the BBC series on social enterpreneurs, Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, is now available. It features Marine Stewardship Council, led by 2007 Skoll social entrepreneur Rupert Howes. For those with access, the show will air on BBC World News over the next week.

Marine Stewardship Council works with fisheries, seafood companies, conservation groups and the public to promote sustainable fishing through a certification program.

The second in an 8-episode series on social entrepreneurs on BBC Worlds News is now available online.  For those of you who get BBC World News, it will be broadcast four times over the next week.  Called Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, the series is led by financial expert Alvin Hall, who brings his experience of 25 years on Wall Street to bear in looking at eight social entrepreneurial organizations working around the globe.

In this episode, Alvin travels to India, where farmers struggle to grow their crops during the long dry months. IDEI tries to help by making affordable irrigation products that feed plants a drop of water at a time. But can farmers really make enough money to pay for them? And can IDEI’s inspirational boss, Amitabha Sadangi, accept Alvin’s challenge to groom a successor?

The first in an 8-episode series on social entrepreneurs on BBC Worlds News is now available online.  For those of you who get BBC World News, it will be broadcast four times over the next week.  Called Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, the series is led by financial expert Alvin Hall, who brings his experience of 25 years on Wall Street to bear in looking at eight social entrepreneurial organizations working around the globe. Alvin is funny, engaging and empathetic in ways that deliver a serious message while keeping the viewer entertained. This initial episode features Riders for Health, led by Andrea and Barry Coleman, 2006 Skoll social entrepreneurs.  Riders for Health uses an innovative motorcycle based transportation system for health care delivery in Africa.

BBC World News is launching an eight-part series on social entrepreneurs around the globe. Alvin’s Guide to Good Business will follow financial expert Alvin Hall (.pdf) as he visits a different social entrepreneur each week. He will look at business models, impact, and the challenges of scaling. Featured organizations include Riders for Health, IDE-India, Marine Stewardship Council, Apopo, Partners in Health, Friends International, Camfed and Kiva. The Skoll Foundation partnered with RockhopperTV on the series.