What if we created an Awards show for Doing Good .... like TED meets the Academy Awards for SE awesomeness!

Categories might include: Best SE Innovation, Best Sustainable Project, Most Promising Idea, Most Urgent Problem, Most Creative Approach, Best Producer of Collective Good, Best Funder of Change, Best Team Captain (male and female lead), Best SE Technology, Best Social Enterprise, Best SE (Hybrid), Best Sustainable Venture for a NPO, Best New Talent (30-18), Best Rising Star (<18), Best Collaboration, Best Venture to Scale, Best in Crisis, Best Humor: Making the Best of the Worst Circumstances, Best Creative Campaign for Good.  

the 5 nominees for each category get a 30 second video to pitch their project and the winners get a 2 minute pitch + a 90 second acceptance speech ;) ....

Let's show the world how glamorous, sexy, fashionable, cool & inspiring our SE world is, so that kids all over the globe will want to grow up to DO THAT!  ... to honor those who fall, to celebrate those who succeed ......

To lessen the "popularity" contest of many recent approaches to funding that benefits those larger organizations with a strong base, the Academy of Social Entrepreneurs would be comprised of members and voting members.  Voting members would be invited and nominated based upon their experience .... A school whose admission reflects a true "meritocracy" where experience counts because a failed venture for good has far more value more than a degree!

What do you think?

While I was traveling this summer, I met a lot of people who were interested in social entrepreneurship.   With the Ning network no longer seemed like the optimal forum to share this information, so I decided to take all those resources and put them here: SE 101: For Social Entrepreneurs... combined with a place to put ideas for social enterprise ventures as they emerge.

Welcome to our alpha 0.1 site: we adopted an iterative design approach building on IDEO's business in beta

I look forward to your inspiration, feedback and comments. Thanks!

Vision

Ideas that Impact .... disrupt the status quo. 

Ideas emerge from curiosity, passion, talent, excellence, commitment to the greater good.

Impact looks for pragmatic, innovative solutions that capitalize on interdisciplinary, inclusive problem solving.

We invite your ideas!

How the SE101 resources came to be

This collection of links and resources arose from a chance conversation between Dagmar of d. connects in Berlin, Alban a French business school student traveling the world to identify opportunities to leverage technology for social good, and me (Kate), an interdisciplinary pollinator who avidly follows the social enterprise market.  After a two hour whirlwind of ideas and information sharing about who is doing what, where to find them, cool projects that have succeeded, tips for global enterprise, we closed Peace One Day's 10th Anniversary party on Sept 19, 2009.

From subsequent email to Alban, Social Enterprise Exchange (SEE Change) Ning was launched. I put my programming and social entrepreneur experience into action to build a platform for social entrepreneur to exchange with the hope of connecting passionate people to expand the power and impact of our collective action. Alpha version 0.1 (forums on a squarespace site: moxy2be June 2008) --> Alpha 0.2 (ning: December 2009) --> Alpha 0.3 (leadership & social enterprise primer content here, for now) & the social enterprise ethics collaborative platform under development ---> www.socentethics.com 

Vision
A Global Sustainable Leadership Circle of social entrepreneurs and social change agents who lead sustainable, inspired change with a commitment to Excellence, Transparency, Humility, Inclusiveness, Courage, Service in every action.

Disruptive technology and social enterprise promise to change fundamentals about people, interactions, and society. This human terrain differs from classic business and purely economic transactions.  While social enterprises may unleash innovation, eliminate inefficiencies, and promote the common good, they may also threaten the status quo prompting fear, anger, resistance.  Engaging social change may threaten identity, power and privilege at many levels, and even the best of intentions may lead to unintended consequences that jeopardize visions for empowerment, hope, and change.

This resource aims to build a community to ask what are the best leadership paradigms, practices, and formulas for success in the social change domain.  A social enterprise changes the metrics of success.  How do you measure success? What practices have succeeded?  How can we, as leaders of social enterprise and social change, optimize the impact of effort for sustainable change?  What models do people have for leading a new paradigm, an inclusive approach, a collaborative way for social change? This platform connects like-passioned people in order to harness wisdom to promote sustainable leadership in engaging social change.


Mission

.... to strengthen the global network of people engaging change with sustainable leadership practices by connecting people who are passionate about social change.

....to build a hope-filled, inclusive world for tomorrow's children by creating an "exchange" for sharing, collaborating, and expanding experience-based knowledge, ideas, skills, resources for impact-focused action by social entrepreneurs.


Intention

The time for change has come. Creating change leads to new problems; we see those problems as opportunities.  Our intention is to see that new problems catalyze new strategies for addressing the problems that lead to innovative solutions. Changemakers work with passionate determination that requires attention and diligence to maintain their fire.  We believe that when unleashed the human capacity for innovation and creative problem solving is limitless. 

The intention is to create a forum for social change leaders to light their own torches to let their passion shine and to expand the creative flow for problem solving among leaders actively engaging social change.

Leaders of social change may benefit from:

• practices for self care for sustainable leadership
• tools to include resistors in planning
• strategies to allow people to light their own torch breaking cycles of inequity/oppression
• capacity building to face others' fear with courage while embracing the fear with compassion
• resources for inclusive leadership methods that embody social change
  
• guidance to lead in a manner that models the ideals of the social change we seek to create

These are best shared by social entrepreneurs, for social entrepreneurs.  This platform aims to make that possible.


Transparent Engagement
The aim is to create a transparent, user driven resource.  Editing will follow these guidelines.  Requests for clarification are welcome. This note will be modified to transparently explain decisions if issues arise.

• Excellence: Built by a social entrepreneur/ social change agent for social entrepreneurs and social change agents, this resource's goal is to be practical, relevant, and inspiring. Your collaboration, input and participation are essential in this process.  I see excellence as a learning process- daring to push the margin of our potential to optimize what we do.  I welcome your feedback and value your suggestions.
  
• Trustworthiness: decisions about what to include, what not to include may arise.  For now, the aim is to share resources that have crossed my radar as a prompt for you to share your favorite resources. If other issues arise, I am committed to addressing them transparently.
  
• Humility: this exchange is intended as a dialogue and resource for interlearning.  The hope is to build a community of like-passioned people asking similar questions and open to learning. This is not intended as a place ideological dogmatism. The ideas and strategies shared come from our knowledge, experience, and building on the wisdom of others... This platform serves as a resource to light one's own torch with tools for sustainable leadership of social change. 
  
• Integrity: congruity and values alignment are core commitments; the means is the end and this platform seeks to model what it values and hopes to create: respect, excellence, transparency, humility, congruity, inclusiveness, collaboration, service. 
  
• Commitment: this resource will be updated regularly, every few days.  The hope is to grow a global community of editors to support more regular engagement.
  
• Service: this platform is a service project and a non-commercial resource listing.
  
• All original content and work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Disclaimers
This is a resource page based upon resource that have been found, experienced or recommended. Inclusion does not necessarily endorse programs and projects listed.

In May of 2008, I joined the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Sangha for a retreat on 21st Century Engaged Buddhism and a UNESCO summit on Buddhism's Contributions to Social Justice. 

In a retreat of 400, we were more than 40 young adults under 35.  Our discussion groups merged together to begin a collaboration to continue the engagement.  A small group of us seeded an initial website for capacity building and sustainable leadership resources for changemakers.  Our aim was to create a web 2.0 of what Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh started with the School for Social Workers more than 40 years before in the midst of war.  With a squarespace site and some basic resource sharing, we launched a digital refuge and resource for our global young adult community in June 2008.    

By the summer retreat, Thay called for a "Wake Up" movement, and the monastics developed a more sustainable, internally hosted site for the young adult community.  The Wake Up movement is flourishing all around the world, learn more here.

My first blog started in 2007, on Blogger was Planet Well.  Some of those posts appear here as well. 

Planet Well includes resources that were pulled together to give people a 101 on social enterprise and a 101 on sustainable leadership to lead social enterprise ventures... as well as posts from my previous blog named Planet Well.  Planet Well had the vision to provide interdisciplinary posts that C-CLEAR by discussing topics that included: Community, Culture, Leadership, Ethics, Art, Research 

About Planet Well

Planet Well Blog's Intention
With the planet well blog, we hope to open a dialogue about innovations in incubation and offer a forum to foster collaboration on endeavors challenging the status quo in the social sector.

Planet Well Mission
The PW mission is to develop and foster robust, practicable solutions that promote wellness, health and human dignity.

Planet Well Strategy
Building and expanding upon the great ideas of others, PW aims to achieve its mission by employing the tools of innovation, courageous determination, a bit of wit, and an unwavering commitment to excellence and humility in the problem solving process.

Planet Well Origins
Planet well ideas are the labor of love and fledgling brainchildren of Kate- a social innovator, pragmatic idealist, and pollinator- and collaborators, like you, invited to join the problem solving adventure.