Archive for the 'Making A Difference' Category

In a town ravaged by AIDs, widows, single moms, and needy moms unite in a microenterprise to survive. Several years into the project they find themselves thriving.
Their product? Recycling plastic grocery bags into pocketbooks.
From WORLD
The bags: colorful crocheted pocketbooks fashioned from recycled plastic grocery bags. Half of the revenue from each pocketbook goes to its […]

I wondered if any of these caterers was a home based business when I saw the headline about this program.
If you live in a city with an NFL franchise, maybe there’s other help to be found?
NFL Helps Locals Women and Minority Owned Businesses Score Super Bowl Business 
The food is courtesy of local caterer All About […]

This caught my eye as a very clever marketing idea.
Many marketers use “Free Online Books” to promote their business or, in this case, their causes.
We know that blogs can score well in search rankings, so how do you combine the allure of a free online book with the potential search results of a blog?
Gerry Charlotte […]

Yesterday I wrote about KIVA and I’ve mentioned “One Laptop Per Child” before too on several occaisions.
Here’s an interesting story by Christian Science Monitor on “Nonprofit slips in race for cheap laptop for world’s poor kids
Problems at One Laptop Per Child show how social entrepreneurs can blaze trails but miss the payoff.”
Microlending started off from […]

I love Kiva.org don’t get me wrong. But they’re a case where their popularity may exact a price.
I went there the other day to recirculate some money that had been paid back and all the businesses were funded!
That’s a bit like going to Starbucks to learn they’re out of coffee.
Fortunately they had more available businesses […]

On the afternoon of December 13th,  the Whole Foods supermarket in West Hartford had a computer glitch.
Customers were backing up in line and there was no telling when the system would go back on line. The manager on duty and the employees had a quick confab and the decision was made to let customers have […]

This is “economic development” as it ought to be practiced world wide.  Their definition of helping people financially isn’t a hand out. Instead they seek to give people a method that produces meaningful income. They’ve helped about 10,000 families this year.
From Kickstart International:
Maurice & Josephine Simatei live in Eldoret, Western Kenya. They lost their […]

I, and many other folks love Kiva.org as a way to help people through microlending. Nevertheless not all that passes for microlending is an influence for good.
Basically big banks in the Third World are getting into microlending as the Banana Republic’s alternative to the “Pay Day Loan”. Because it’s popular, they can act like they’re […]

The East Longmeadow Small Business Association is working to help the Planning Board come up with some workable solutions for home business owners. The antiquated zoning laws, created in 1962, do not reflect the economic realities of the community and business world today.
Thankfully this sounds like one Planning Board that is forward thinking instead of […]

A quaint property with a combination of historical and sentimental value was saved recently - by a telecommuter.
Locals had feared that the hand built stone home would be bulldozed for apartment development by the new owners.
Instead a telecommuter whose wife works there locally has bought the home as a personal residence. An employee of a […]