The Unreasonable Institute emerged from both inspiration and frustration. 4 years ago, Daniel Epstein, our President and Co-Founder, traveled to the Czech Republic to attend a global youth leadership program. Dan was thrilled to interact with "future leaders" from all over the world, but frustrated by the opportunity cost of the program. The program did not produce measurable impact nor lead to the development of viable solutions to the world’s challenges. Determined to create a place where young people could learn "how to change the world" practically, he decided to create a similar program in Boulder, Colorado (where we all attend/attended college). Along with partner Mike Forte, Dan brought 17 students together from 14 different countries (including Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and Colombia) in the summer of 2008 to study leadership, but still found he was unsatisfied with the outcomes. Suddenly, he realized the value of combining the convergence of driven, young people from around the world with social entrepreneurship.
In the meanwhile, I was in India conducting research about effective NGO practices in addressing rural poverty and learned about the consistent failure of charity-based models to produce outcomes. I found that effective organizations viewed the poor more as customers and entrepreneurs, instead of recipients of charity (to borrow a line from one of my heros: Paul Polak of International Development Enterprises and D-Rev: Design for the Other 90%). I brought this view back to the US and Dan and I became incredibly excited about the potential for business to address social and environmental challenges. The concept behind the institute emerged from the intersection of our experiences, shared over cups of hot chai and breakfast scrambles.
The name for the organization came from George Bernard Shaw's assertion that "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman]." We read this quotation in the book The Power of Unreasonable People and secured permission from one of its authors, Pamela Hartigan (now director of the Skoll Centre) to use "Unreasonable" in our name. The Unreasonable Institute was born!
Christa - There are a lot of group out there that support social entrepreneurs; many of them are your partners. What makes you different from groups like Social Edge or Acumen Fund?
Teju - We provide young social entrepreneurs with EVERYTHING. We pair them with mentors, align them with seed capital, provide skills training, offer them free legal consulting, web hosting and development, access to premier research, and a global network of support. Additionally, we have very specific goals. We incubate social ventures that will:
1.) Effectively address a social or environmental challenge;
2.) Become financially self-sustaining (do not require external financing) within 1 year;
3.) Scale outside their country of origin within 3 years, effectively addressing a global issue on a global level;
4.) Be open for replication (copylefted) 4 years after launch;
5.) Meet the needs of at least 1 million people
Many organizations dedicated to enabling social entrepreneurs are grant agencies, foundations, or traditional non-profits. We hold ourselves to the same standards outlined above. Finally, our institute is developed by, directed by, and dedicated to young social entrepreneurs from all over the world between the ages of 20-30.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Web hosting
A lot of the small things that customers notice come from your Web hosting service, which is why choosing a reliable hosting company like Yahoo Web Hosting is so important. Just putting up a website is not enough to find success online. There are millions of businesses that are trying to drive customers to their websites and yours needs to stand out from the rest in order to get noticed.
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