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Your company might have donated money to help solve humanitarian issues, but you could have something even more useful to offer: your data.

South African philanthropy is entering a new era. A hotbed of innovation, it can make a purposeful contribution to addressing the country’s challenges, and perhaps inspire work in other parts of the world.

Philanthropy is a complex term within the South African context. The history of the country has had a significant effect on shaping philanthropy from charitable giving (welfare philanthropy) to strategic philanthropy, by communities and families, to highly specialised Foundations.

These days, formalised strategic philanthropy in South Africa indicates that there is a huge contribution being made to support those in need by making data more public and shareable.

Foundations all over the world are grappling with their role in the emerging field of data and artificial intelligence. Data has the ability to help us work at a larger scale than ever before, be more efficient, and solve problems more effectively.

What’s required is the capacity or technical knowledge to either shape innovations or make sense of which ones to back, and for organisations to face complex challenges about transparency, ownership and ethics. While there are many promising initiatives in the field of data for social good, the social sector as a whole plays a relatively minor role, and many initiatives struggle to scale beyond small pilots.

Several examples have come to light during the ongoing West African Ebola virus outbreak of 2014, which has catalysed international efforts to improve the continent’s disease surveillance infrastructure. One particular innovation is an attempt to crowdsource contributions to OpenStreetMap, the self-described “Wikipedia for Maps” that anyone can edit. OpenStreetMap volunteers are using satellite images to manually identify roads, buildings, bodies of water, and other features in rural areas of West Africa, which can help aid workers and local public health officials better plan their interventions and ensure every village has been checked for the disease. How cool is that?

In the video below, Mallory Freeman shows us how private sector companies can help make real progress on big problems – from the refugee crisis to world hunger – by donating untapped data and decision scientists.

What might your company be able to contribute?

Share with us in the comments below.

Find original sources here, here and here.

Original Article

Imagine a snake-robot designer, a balloon scientist, a liquid-crystals technologist, an extradimensional physicist, a psychology geek, an electronic-materials wrangler, and a journalist walk into a room. What do you get?

Google X.

Google X, the moonshot (read: an extremely ambitious and innovative project) factory at Alphabet (the parent company of Google), has one purpose: to dream up far-out answers to crucial problems.

This purpose of X (founded in 2010), is not to solve Google’s problems; thousands of people are already doing that. Nor is its mission solely philanthropic. Instead X exists, ultimately, to create world-changing social companies that could eventually become the next Google. The enterprise considers more than 100 ideas each year, in areas ranging from clean energy to artificial intelligence. But only a tiny percentage become “projects,” with full-time staff working on them. It’s too soon to know whether many (or any) of these shots will reach the moon, but several projects—most notably its self-driving-car company, Waymo, recently valued at $70 billion by one Wall Street firm—look like they may.

X is perhaps the only enterprise on the planet where regular investigation into the absurd is not just permitted but encouraged, and even required. X has quietly looked into space elevators and cold fusion. It has tried, and abandoned, projects to design hoverboards with magnetic levitation and to make affordable fuel from seawater. It has tried – and succeeded, in varying measures – to build self-driving cars, make drones that deliver aerodynamic packages, and design contact lenses that measure glucose levels in a diabetic person’s tears.

These ideas might sound too random to contain a unifying principle. But they do. Each X idea adheres to a simple three-part formula.

1: It must address a huge problem.

2: It must propose a radical solution.

3: It must employ a relatively feasible technology. In other words, any idea can be a moonshot—unless it’s frivolous, small-bore, or impossible.

Below, meet some of X’s leading #PurposePioneers implementing this three-part formula.

1. Obi Felten leads Foundry, a division of X tasked with turning scientific breakthroughs into marketable products.

2. Raj B. Apte, the leader of Project Malta, which seeks to store wind power in molten salt.

3. Rich DeVaul, a co-founder of Project Loon, which seeks to provide internet access to remote places using a fleet of balloons.

4. Cliff L. Biffle, a member of X’s Rapid Eval team, which seeks to kill, as quickly as possible, ideas that will ultimately fail.

Find out more here.

Original Article

impact investments

im·pact in·vest·ments

NOUN: Impact investments are investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.

What Is It Impact Investing?

Impact investing attracts individuals as well as institutional investors including hedge funds, private foundations, banks, pension funds, and other fund managers.

Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed markets, and target a range of returns from below market to market rate, depending on investors’ strategic goals. The point of impact investing is to use money and investment capital for positive social results.

The growing impact investment market provides capital to address the world’s most pressing challenges in sectors such as sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, conservation, micro-finance, and affordable and accessible basic services including housing, healthcare, and education.

Characteristics of Impact Investing

The practice of impact investing is further defined by the following characteristics:

• Intentionality: An investor’s intention to have a positive social or environmental impact through investments is essential to impact investing.

• Investments with Return Expectations: Impact investments are expected to generate a financial return on capital or, at minimum, a return of capital.

• Range of Return Expectations and Asset Classes: Impact investments target financial returns that range from below market (sometimes called “concessionary”) to risk-adjusted market rate, and can be made across asset classes, including but not limited to cash equivalents, fixed income, venture capital, and private equity.

How do Impact Investments Perform Financially?

Impact investors have diverse financial return expectations. Some intentionally invest for below-market-rate returns, in line with their strategic objectives. Others pursue market-competitive and market-beating returns, sometimes required by fiduciary responsibility. Most investors surveyed in the GIIN’s 2019 Annual Impact Investor Survey pursue competitive, market-rate returns. Respondents also report that portfolio performance overwhelmingly meets or exceeds investor expectations for both social and environmental impact and financial return, in investments spanning emerging markets, developed markets, and the market as a whole.

Impact Investments worth Noting

Tin Shed Ventures

Tin Shed Ventures is Patagonia’s corporate venture capital fund, which we use to invest in environmentally and socially responsible start-up companies. It takes its name from the blacksmith shop where Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard forged pitons, and then made removable hardware that enabled a clean-climbing revolution. That Tin Shed in Ventura, California, still stands alongside our corporate headquarters, as Tin Shed Ventures funds the next generation of responsible businesses.

Ellevest

Ellevest is a transformative financial technology company created to help women achieve their financial potential through modern, low-cost investing, with a beautifully designed digital platform backed by a unique investing approach. From a gender-smart investing algorithm for digital-only customers to bespoke portfolios for private wealth clients, Ellevest also provides the option to invest for impact and in other women. Ellevest is for those who believe that because women generally have longer lifespans and are typically paid less than men, the old approaches haven’t worked for everyone — and that when women thrive, everyone is better off. Ellevest is led by Sallie Krawcheck, called the “Last Honest Analyst” by Fortune Magazine, and was named one of NerdWallet’s Best Robo-Advisors in 2019 and 2018.

Numbers for Good

Numbers for Good bridges the world of finance to organizations dedicated to improving people’s lives and helping the planet. They create financial solutions that allow organizations to fund social and environmental projects and connect investors with opportunities for sustainable financial and social returns.

The Media Development Investment Fund

The Media Development Investment Fund invests in independent media around the world providing the news, information and debate that people need to build free, thriving societies. Timely, accurate, relevant information is critical to free societies, enabling fuller participation in public life, holds the powerful to account and protects the rights of the individual. The MDIF has investments in more than 100 media companies in 38 countries. They have provided more than $134 million in financing, including $117 million in debt and equity investments. MDIF has received $63 million in recovered principal, earning almost $40 million in interest, dividends and capital gains, and returned $28 million to investors.

One Acre Fund

One Acre Fund supplies smallholder farmers with the financing and training they need to grow their way out of hunger and poverty. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre Fund invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. They supply a complete service bundle of seeds and fertilizer, financing, training, and market facilitation—and deliver these services within walking distance of the 400,000 rural farmers they serve. One Acre Fund began in East Africa, and now currently serves farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.

Find the original sources here and here.

Original Article

A café in Cape Town is helping former inmates get their lives back on track as part of a job-readiness programme, all while serving a hot cuppa to the public.

Gangstar Café is a social enterprise of The Message Trust South Africa. The Message Trust works with youth at risk across Cape Town in prisons, schools and tough neighbourhoods. Gangstar Café was initiated to create training and employment opportunities for youth out of prison. With youth unemployment being as high at 35% and coupled with a criminal record, it is virtually impossible for someone leaving prison to find employment. The first Gangstar Café was launched in Mowbray on Main Road in April 2017, and the second in Durbanville Town Shopping Centre in April 2019.

Students in prison get training in leadership, public speaking, business entrepreneurship and job readiness. Pastoral care support is also provided to all the young people in the prison. Once released, the individuals are reintegrated back into society and once certain levels of commitment are displayed, they are placed into barista training. On the job training is also offered in the cafes in customer service, stock management, processes, food preparation and other aspects of working in the hospitality industry.

After serving time in jail for violent crimes, baristas at Gangstar Café in Mowbray are now in training as baristas proper, giving them purpose and an opportunity to provide for their families. Their mission is to “create meaningful employment opportunities to prevent youth crime and gangsterism”.

Gangstar Café was born out of the prison work of The Message Trust South Africa, a registered NGO focused on breaking the cycle of poverty by focussing on youth at risk, both in and out of prison.

“We aim to provide excellent customer service and secure loyal customers who keep coming back.”

Trainees learn the importance of ensuring that processes and standards are followed and transferred into all areas of employment.

Former inmate Xola Dingiswayo told News24 how he started with not much knowledge about coffee at all, but worked his way up and is now a junior manager at the Mowbray branch. He plans to better his craft so he may compete in barista competitions in 2021.

There are two Gangstar Café branches, in Mowbray and in Durbanville, both run by five former inmates.

Find the original source here.

Original Article