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November 07, 2004
Overcoming Grant Dependency Syndrome
Foundations hold their assets in an endowment and then invest that money in securities. The idea of oneVillage.biz is to develop a entire suite of services to promote social enterprise solutions for underserved communities. We seek to more effectively allocate resources towards sustaianble investments. Present the way in which money flows through the global progressive/socially conscious/counter-culture movement is not effectively moving us towards the development of rapidly scalable sustainable systems. One alternative to the existing model would see donors as investors, tying our progress in developing sustainable enterprises with that of those who make a financial commitment to us.
Social Conscious Venture Fund for Bottom Up Economy
The solar power Village is one prime example of a "technology cluster." Others include SolaRoof greenhouses (www.solaroof.org) and Zero Emissions Research Initiative's Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IF&WMS) developed by Dr George Chan (see www.zeri.org for more). We also are looking at how these technologies could be developed into a sustainable economic model as well as ecological and social ones--that is a key concept of our work.
Conclusion
What we envision is a sustainable investment network as an alternative to the current reliance on non-profit foundations. Actually we think that approaching socially conscious investors directly is a way of actually cutting out the middleman--including in many cases the foundations themselves. We are developing relationships with several contacts in the socially conscious investment community.
Henry Migingo, an accountant working with us to develop social enterprises in Nairobi, Kenya says that he believes “that sustainability will be realized in developing economies by involving the people on the ground on economic activities.” He add that “Grants, donations, charities name them; have proved inconsistent to the development of sustainable economies. Sustainability does not come from spoon-feeding but from the works of ones own hands using the available resources. Each of us must be an agent of change to our respective worlds (environments). I have been wondering how an organization that has grant dependency syndrome can advocate for sustainability?
Posted by jefbuder at November 7, 2004 06:06 PM