Social Innovation

Social Entrepreneurs are helping thousands of people and are the pioneers of Social Innovation. This are the people who solve problems, that stand in between entrepreneurs and their future markets. Nowadays, Social Innovation is less a field of charity but of partnerships, which led to a increased productivity. Social entrepreneurs function as a first warning radar for market and societal shifts as well.

Karen Tell
The first speaker of the session was Karen Tal, principle of a school in Israel for children from 48 countries with complicated backgrounds, for example refugees or children from single families. Among the 141 children are Jews, Christians and Moslems as well. Because most children have complicated family backgrounds, the school has to serve as a family substitute in a way. That’s why it is opened until the evening. Financially and otherwise, the school is supported by the Municipal as well as NGOs or people like Yossi Vardi. More than 100 volunteers are involved in many kind of ways, for example with giving private lessons. Another thing the school does, is to discuss with the Government when it comes to deportation cases.

Gabi Zedlmayer, HP
Next, Gabi Zedlmayer from HP presented the work her company does in the social sector. HP experiences a significantly higher reputation through this activities.

Education
For example, HP provided a troubled math class with tablets. The failure rate was at 60 per cent. On the tablets, the teacher could instantly see what each student did, and the students themselves could ask questions anonymously via the tablet. The notes of the teachers got transferred automatically onto their tablet. The Result: The failure rate dropped to 20 per cent immediately and to 5-10 per cent in the long term.

To provide such services at larger scale and to transfer knowledge into communities, HP founded a think tank of five institutions named Catalyst Innovative.

• Sloan: Multiversity, for bringing content on mobile phones
• Carnegie Mellon: for easuring Learning
• Future Lab: Pedagogy 3.0
• Meraka: Global Collaboratory
• Agastya: The New Learner: How can we integrate external learning in schools

Furthermore they have the Life Program, an eSkills training program for small entrepreneurs in developing countries where they learn how to use IT for marketing, finances or logos, for example. For example, a women in Nigeria who took the course set up a small farm with three chicken, now has thousands and employs other people.

Apart from that, they allow their employees 4 hours of social work a month.

Another sector they are busy in is Health. In developing countries, 700 000 people a year die because of wrong drug prescription. HP helped develop a database for medicines, that can be accessed by sending a text message with the number and tell the patient if he can take the medicine.

In Kenia, they supported testing of children with HIV, so that the results come back faster and the ARV Treatments can begin immediately. Another project they support is the Mothers2Mothers program in South Africa, that helps to get information about possible treatment of HIV and prevention of Mother-to-Child-transmission to pregnant women. 40 per cent of mothers pass HIV onto their child, although it is medically possibly to virtually eliminate the transmission. Mothers2Mothers pays Mentor Mothers, that fill the gaps in critically under-resourced areas. 300 000 mothers were supported by now. HP supports the project with mobile technology for an individual outreach to the mothers for recalls or notifications.

Claudia Gonzalez, Global Fund
The Global Fund is a financial institution that takes money from countries rather than from charity and gives it to countries. It focuses on the fight against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. It is a highly political company. One main goal of the Global Fund is to eliminate the mother-to-child transmission of HIV until 2015. They put that topic on the agenda of the G8, but wanted to convince tax payers as well of their cause to put pressure on governments to further support the programs. For that, from May until October 2010, they launched a social media campaign and got 700 000 signatures for Born HIV Free.

Ahsa Jadeja
Asha Jadeja, an investor, talked about her daughter being able to study much better outside of the classroom, going from Cs to straight As when changing to a school where attendance was voluntary. Her daughter taught herself via online lessons. After that experience, Asha Jadeja is trying to set up a free platform for learning.