CDDRL and Stanford Social Entrepreneurial Students' Association (SENSA) welcome Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet this Friday who will speak in a moderated discussion on the power of relationships in social entrepreneurship with CDDRL Director Francis Fukuyama.
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Carrie Hessler-Radelet, the 19th Director of the Peace Corps has led historic reforms to modernize and strengthen the agency to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century during her time. She spearheaded sweeping efforts to revitalize the Volunteer recruitment, application, and selection process, resulting in record-breaking application numbers in 2015. Hessler-Radelet has also been instrumental in forging innovative strategic partnerships, such as Let Girls Learn, a powerful whole-of-government collaboration with First Lady Michelle Obama to expand access to education for adolescent girls around the world, and the Global Health Service Partnership, which sends physicians and nurses to teach in developing countries.
Stanford’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship welcomes four social entrepreneurs to campus this year to engage students and the Stanford community with leaders in the social sector. The four will serve as Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS) Fellows at the Haas Center for Public Service through June, and will be teaching a service-learning course (IR142) in the spring quarter.
The SEERS Fellows lead organizations using entrepreneurial models to advance social justice and pioneer new approaches to public service delivery for marginalized communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally. They have all been recognized for their path-breaking work in the field of social entrepreneurship with awards and prestigious fellowships for their contributions to their sector.
The 2016 cohort will join 15 other SEERS alumni who have been part of the program since its launch in 2011.
Hip Hop Therapy Goes Global
CDDRL Associate Director Sarina Beges poses with Tomas Alvarez at Beats Rhymes and Life’s Oakland headquarters
Trained as a social worker, Tomás Alvarez quickly realized that there was little diversity amongst clinicians in the field, which created a cultural mismatch and barrier to those accessing services. He set off to transform mental health service delivery for communities of color by pioneering “Hip Hop Therapy,” which uses the art of creating rap music to connect to troubled teens. In 2011, Alvarez launched Beats Rhymes and Life (BRL) in Oakland, California to offer trainings to local schools and mental health providers to share their culturally responsive approach to working with marginalized youth. In January, Alvarez stepped down from his role as executive director of BRL to launch a new platform to connect Hip Hop Therapy providers across the globe to each other and the resources they need to grow and sustain their models.
Photo Caption: The program's co-founder Sarina Beges poses with Tomás Alvarez (right) at Beats Rhymes and Life’s Oakland headquarters.
From Farm to Firm to Family: Advancing the Food Justice Movement
Jered Lawson is making food systems change and reform a reality through his work as the co-founder of Pie Ranch, a farm located along Northern California’s coastline. Pie Ranch’s mission is not just to grow delicious and organic agriculture, but to educate, train, and form regional partnerships to realize their vision of cultivating a just food system. Lawson leads many of their education programs, which bring Bay Area high school students to farm the land, learn more about locally grown food, and maybe even inspire a new generation of farmers. Lawson has worked with local government and community organizations on policy reform to secure more land for small farming. He has also partnered with Silicon Valley technology firms – and Stanford Dining – to provide sustainably grown and sourced food for employees and students to enjoy.
Rajasvini (Vini) Bhansali brings an international lens to the SEERS program this year as the executive director of the International Development Exchange (IDEX), an organization based in San Francisco, California that works globally in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Growing up in Rajasthan, India, Vini developed a strong sense of social justice from an early age and has translated that wisdom into her work at IDEX. The organization provides flexible funding to local organizations led by women, youth, and indigenous leaders with innovative solutions based on local knowledge and customs. Vini has helped lead IDEX’s work to challenge traditional patterns of philanthropy and international development that favor top-down externally driven solutions to local problems.
Josefina Alvarado-Mena is the 2016 Echoing Green-SEERS Fellow, her fellowship made possible through a partnership with Echoing Green, an organization that funds early-stage social entrepreneurs. Each year, Echoing Green selects a member of their alumni community to participate in the SEERS fellowship. Mena, a 1996 Echoing Green fellow, is the executive director of Safe Passages, an organization based in Oakland, California that works to create a better future for Oakland’s children and youth. Through an integrated model that works with children and their families from the cradle through adulthood, Safe Passages helps to interrupt the cycle of poverty and put children on a track towards college and career. Their innovative programs provide early childhood education to new parents, work with schools to integrate education and social services, provide career development opportunities for youth, and build strong family partnerships with community members.
Stanford students will have the opportunity to work on service learning-based projects with SEERS fellows through a course (INTNLREL 142) offered in the spring quarter. Service-learning allows students to gain experience working alongside non-profit leaders to tackle real organizational challenges. From designing new policy reform to developing fundraising strategies, students come away from the experience with new insight into the field of social change and concrete skills.
The SEERS fellows will be on campus through June to teach the service-learning course, participate in events, and engage with student groups. To learn more about the Program on Social Entrepreneurship visit (pse.stanford.edu) or to connect with the SEERS Fellows, please contact Sarina Beges (sbeges@stanford.edu).
Dinsha Mistree is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he manages the Program on Strengthening US-Indian Relations. He is also a research fellow in the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School and an affiliated scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Dr. Mistree studies the relationship between governance and economic growth in developing countries. His scholarship concentrates on the political economy of legal systems, public administration, and education policy, with a regional focus on India. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University, with an S.M. and an S.B. from MIT. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at CDDRL and was a visiting scholar at IIM-Ahmedabad.
View the original article on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website here.
As more students look to pursue meaningful careers in the social sector, it is imperative that educational institutions offer experiential and purpose-based training to support their personal and professional growth. Complex local and global challenges demand innovative solutions that are developed collaboratively by those with the experience, relationships, and values to effectively advance social change. There is no textbook for teaching social change, and the closer we can bring students to social problems–both inside and outside of the classroom–the more informed and effective they will be in developing solutions.
At Stanford University, where I help lead a program on social entrepreneurship, students become part of an entrepreneurial culture from the time they set foot on campus. Whether launching student groups or social enterprises, the desire—and pressure—to create something new permeates much of the fabric of student life on campus. This is reinforced by a surge of competitions and awards that encourage aspiring social changemakers to experiment, fail, and then try again.
As the social entrepreneurship movement becomes increasingly more attractive to young people, we see that they are applying some of these market-driven principles—often unwisely—to the social sector. For example, the desire to start a new organization often outweighs the interest in driving change from inside an existing one as an “intrapreneur.” With an estimated 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States competing for diminishing resources, it doesn’t always make sense to start something new when a product or service already exists. Failure may be a badge of honor for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but when nonprofits close their doors, they let down the communities they are trying to serve and waste precious resources that they could have directed elsewhere.
With this in mind, we designed our program to equip future generations of social change leaders with a fuller range of skills—and the humility—they need to be impactful in their work. Through experiential learning inside and outside the classroom, students work alongside nonprofit organizations to witness how they innovate new approaches to social-change problems. They are able to observe how organizations tackle challenges with creativity, empathy, and a partnership-based approach, helping provide a holistic set of values that will serve them in their future careers. As more students graduate to pursue social-sector careers, it is increasingly important for higher education and leadership programs to incorporate these practice-based experiences into their curriculum, and better connect theory with practice. Cornerstones of our program include:
Community-engaged learning underpins our teaching model. Students get to work on service-learning projects for local nonprofit organizations and learn how successful organizations deliver social change. When designing high-impact fundraising campaigns or surveying partners in the field, students work on projects to support an organization’s growth, while gaining practical skills. At the same time, they experience the values and culture that guide mission-driven organizations. Interacting with the local community outside of the classroom builds listening and empathy skills, while asking challenging questions about privilege and bias that emerge through these experiences. Working with the executive directors of these organizations underscores the backbreaking work that it takes to launch, grow, and scale-up a social change organization—lessons that can help influence their own career decisions.
Field-based fellowships give students the opportunity to serve internationally or locally with our nonprofit partners to implement their service-learning projects in the field. More importantly, these experiences let students explore the local context of the problem, engage directly with community partners, and examine the greater ecosystem in which the organization is operating. This perspective can profoundly transform how a student views a problem, and inform the way they design a program or intervention. Student internships or programs like Alternative Spring Break, where students volunteer their time during a school holiday to examine a social issue in their local community, should be part of any social-impact program so that they have a direct connection to the social challenges they are often so far removed from in their everyday lives.
The partnership approach: Our program also helps reinforce the importance of partnerships as an essential building block for social change. As evidenced by so many failed development projects, organizations operating with good intensions but without community partnership will not only fail, but also risk negatively impacting the communities they are trying to serve. We highlight some of these missteps inside the classroom and contrast them with strong models from our community partners. These include the Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI), which works together with African women to build culturally appropriate, locally sourced, and sustainable clean water technologies. Many of these remarkable women have then gone on to start GWWI chapters in East Africa, becoming water trainers and entrepreneurs themselves. Students learn from these anecdotes, and the importance of building trust in a community, because solutions imposed from the outside rarely last. We model the value of partnership inside the classroom by grouping students into teams for service-learning assignments so they bring a diverse set of skills, perspectives, and experiences to the assignment. Team-based work underscores the collaborative nature of social change; it highlights the value of working together to generate ideas that are not driven by one person alone, but by the collective knowledge of a group.
Stanford student (left) with the Global Women’s Water Initiative team during a Stanford Haas Center supported summer fellowship in Uganda. (Image courtesy of Global Women’s Water Initiative team)
Connecting to youthful purpose: Research highlights the important role that teachers and universities play in helping young people connect to their greater purpose—something many struggle to find at a young age. We are experimenting with innovative curriculum and training programs that shine a more introspective lens on this question through practical exercises and reflective work. Curriculum, such as Echoing Green’s Work on Purpose, help young people connect more deeply to their purpose and explore ways they can make the world a better place. And programs such as the Transformative Action Institute and the Amani Institute are equipping a new generation of changemakers with the skills they need to be more self-reflective, humble, resilient, and culturally sensitive—qualities essential to tackling complex social issues. These initiatives all form an emerging body of social entrepreneurship education that helps instill values and a greater sense of purpose to prepare future generations of social impact makers.
As the social change sector attracts a new wave of university graduates, it is crucial that higher education responds by providing more meaningful experiences for students to learn through direct engagement. By working with community partners, supporting student fellowships, and experimenting with purpose-driven programming, we can better prepare our students for the challenges and complexities of social change work. It is time to put aside the awards and competitions, and focus on training social movement builders who are guided by purpose and values to make more meaningful and lasting contributions to the field.
It is time for universities to rethink how they deliver social impact education, prioritizing experiential and purpose-based training over start-up competitions.
This article originally appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on Sept. 4, 2015
As more students look to pursue meaningful careers in the social sector, it is imperative that educational institutions offer experiential and purpose-based training to support their personal and professional growth. Complex local and global challenges demand innovative solutions that are developed collaboratively by those with the experience, relationships, and values to effectively advance social change. There is no textbook for teaching social change, and the closer we can bring students to social problems–both inside and outside of the classroom–the more informed and effective they will be in developing solutions.
At Stanford University, where I help lead a program on social entrepreneurship, students become part of an entrepreneurial culture from the time they set foot on campus. Whether launching student groups or social enterprises, the desire—and pressure—to create something new permeates much of the fabric of student life on campus. This is reinforced by a surge of competitions and awards that encourage aspiring social changemakers to experiment, fail, and then try again.
As the social entrepreneurship movement becomes increasingly more attractive to young people, we see that they are applying some of these market-driven principles—often unwisely—to the social sector. For example, the desire to start a new organization often outweighs the interest in driving change from inside an existing one as an “intrapreneur.” With an estimated 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States competing for diminishing resources, it doesn’t always make sense to start something new when a product or service already exists. Failure may be a badge of honor for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but when nonprofits close their doors, they let down the communities they are trying to serve and waste precious resources that they could have directed elsewhere.
With this in mind, we designed our program to equip future generations of social change leaders with a fuller range of skills—and the humility—they need to be impactful in their work. Through experiential learning inside and outside the classroom, students work alongside nonprofit organizations to witness how they innovate new approaches to social-change problems. They are able to observe how organizations tackle challenges with creativity, empathy, and a partnership-based approach, helping provide a holistic set of values that will serve them in their future careers. As more students graduate to pursue social-sector careers, it is increasingly important for higher education and leadership programs to incorporate these practice-based experiences into their curriculum, and better connect theory with practice. Cornerstones of our program include:
Community-engaged learning underpins our teaching model. Students get to work on service-learning projects for local nonprofit organizations and learn how successful organizations deliver social change. When designing high-impact fundraising campaigns or surveying partners in the field, students work on projects to support an organization’s growth, while gaining practical skills. At the same time, they experience the values and culture that guide mission-driven organizations. Interacting with the local community outside of the classroom builds listening and empathy skills, while asking challenging questions about privilege and bias that emerge through these experiences. Working with the executive directors of these organizations underscores the backbreaking work that it takes to launch, grow, and scale-up a social change organization—lessons that can help influence their own career decisions.
Field-based fellowships give students the opportunity to serve internationally or locally with our nonprofit partners to implement their service-learning projects in the field. More importantly, these experiences let students explore the local context of the problem, engage directly with community partners, and examine the greater ecosystem in which the organization is operating. This perspective can profoundly transform how a student views a problem, and inform the way they design a program or intervention. Student internships or programs like Alternative Spring Break, where students volunteer their time during a school holiday to examine a social issue in their local community, should be part of any social-impact program so that they have a direct connection to the social challenges they are often so far removed from in their everyday lives.
The partnership approach: Our program also helps reinforce the importance of partnerships as an essential building block for social change. As evidenced by so many failed development projects, organizations operating with good intensions but without community partnership will not only fail, but also risk negatively impacting the communities they are trying to serve. We highlight some of these missteps inside the classroom and contrast them with strong models from our community partners. These include the Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI), which works together with African women to build culturally appropriate, locally sourced, and sustainable clean water technologies. Many of these remarkable women have then gone on to start GWWI chapters in East Africa, becoming water trainers and entrepreneurs themselves. Students learn from these anecdotes, and the importance of building trust in a community, because solutions imposed from the outside rarely last. We model the value of partnership inside the classroom by grouping students into teams for service-learning assignments so they bring a diverse set of skills, perspectives, and experiences to the assignment. Team-based work underscores the collaborative nature of social change; it highlights the value of working together to generate ideas that are not driven by one person alone, but by the collective knowledge of a group.
Connecting to youthful purpose:Research highlights the important role that teachers and universities play in helping young people connect to their greater purpose—something many struggle to find at a young age. We are experimenting with innovative curriculum and training programs that shine a more introspective lens on this question through practical exercises and reflective work. Curriculum, such as Echoing Green’s Work on Purpose, help young people connect more deeply to their purpose and explore ways they can make the world a better place. And programs such as the Transformative Action Institute and the Amani Institute are equipping a new generation of changemakers with the skills they need to be more self-reflective, humble, resilient, and culturally sensitive—qualities essential to tackling complex social issues. These initiatives all form an emerging body of social entrepreneurship education that helps instill values and a greater sense of purpose to prepare future generations of social impact makers.
As the social change sector attracts a new wave of university graduates, it is crucial that higher education responds by providing more meaningful experiences for students to learn through direct engagement. By working with community partners, supporting student fellowships, and experimenting with purpose-driven programming, we can better prepare our students for the challenges and complexities of social change work. It is time to put aside the awards and competitions, and focus on training social movement builders who are guided by purpose and values to make more meaningful and lasting contributions to the field.
The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice (GSDPP), in collaboration with the Leadership Academy for Development (LAD), an affiliate of Stanford University, will be offering a course in April 2015 that addresses some of the challenges faced by public sector leaders as they foster economic growth in politically-charged environments.
This course was run successfully in both 2011 and 2013. The 2015 version – updated with new case studies – will also be facilitated by international and national trainers and experts.
The course is a 5-day, intensive programme for a small number of high level government officials and business leaders from South Africa and other African countries (25-30 in total). It will explore how government can encourage and enable the private sector to play a more effective, productive role in economic growth and development. The curriculum is designed to reinforce and illustrate three critically important hypotheses about the role of public policy in private sector development.
Following in the footsteps of last year’s international conference on violence and policing in Latin American and U.S. Cities, on April 28th and 29th of 2015, the Program on Poverty and Governance (PovGov) at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) turned Encina Hall at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI) into a dynamic, instructive and stimulating discussion platform. The exchange of experiences, expertise and ideals that flourished within this space helped create a “dialogue for action,” as speakers and participants explored the various dimensions of youth and criminal violence in Mexico, Brazil and the United States, while advocating for the importance of opening up adequate pathways to hope. The event was sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, The Bill Lane Center for the America West, The Mexico Initiative at FSI, and the Center on International Security and Cooperation.
For a link to the conference event page, click here.
To find out more about CDDRL's Program on Poverty and Governance, click here.
As part of the Arab Reform and Democracy Program's speaker series, Executive Director of the Mediterranean Development Initiative Ghazi Ben Ahmed examined the challenge of youth alienation in the context of the Tunisian transition. Social and economic grievances of Tunisian youth played a major role in igniting the uprising in Tunisia, and more generally, the so-called Arab Spring. Despite a successful political transition in the country, progress on addressing youth grievances has been slow in light of deteriorating living conditions, rampant corruption, and rising unemployment. These realities continue to pose a serious challenge to the prospects of building a sustainable democracy in Tunisia. Based on data gathered from meetings with a diverse group of 500 young Tunisians, this talk will shed light on youth’s perceived and actual exclusion from social, economic, and political opportunities. In doing so it will provide a critical assessment of the underlying causes of youth alienation in the country and prospects for greater political, social and economic inclusion.
Join the Center for African Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's (CDDRL) Program on Social Entrepreneurship (in partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service) for a special lunchtime seminar.
Three leaders from the Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI) will share their work in East Africa transforming women from being water bearers to water providers and social entrepreneurs. GWWI is training and building a cadre of women water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) specialists steeped in a holistic set of technical and entrepreneurial skills to lift themselves from poverty and create self-reliance. Women have developed the capacity to construct technologies, provide health education and generate revenue by professionalizing their services. Come to Africa Table for an engaging hour listening to the stories of these three incredible leaders.
Gemma Bulos is a multi award-winning social entrepreneur, water champion and musician. As Director of the Global Women's Water Initiative, she trains women to be technicians and entrepreneurs who are able to build clean water and sanitation solutions in their communities. Her work has provided over 200,000 people with clean water in Asia and Africa.
Rose Wamalwa manages GWWI in-country logistics as Kenya/Tanzania Regional Coordinator. She was named one of the '8 African Water Women to Watch' by WASH Advocates alongside President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and President Joyce Banda of Malawi. She is currently an IREX Community Solutions Fellow sponsored by the US State Department.
Godliver Businge, Head Technology Trainer is a trained mason, welder, bricklayer, and a candidate for a Civil Engineering degree in Uganda. She is admired for her ability to train women with no background in construction. Godliver received a scholarship from the Uganda Rural Devlop-ment Trust, and was recently featured in Reuters trust.org as a Female Water Role Model.
