Tag Archives | inspiration

Mining Gold in E-Waste and Ex-Cons

By on April 2, 2013 in Building a Social Venture, Social Entrepreneurship, Stories of Impact

Kabira Stokes is YOXI’s newest Social Innovation Rockstar (SIR) — Yoxi’s term for entrepreneurs who are rocking the social innovation Casbah.  We were inspired by Kabira’s unique ability to realize how seemingly unrelated problems can be linked together to form a systemic solution. Stokes’ triple-bottom-line social enterprise was built on the realization that hundreds of [...]

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In the Business of Helping Others, Put Yourself First

By on March 6, 2013 in Starting the Journey

Recently, I ran into a hurdle with my organization, Cheti. The journey to, over, and past this obstacle has been as much a discovery of myself as it was of others. I have seen that during the last three years I have been so concerned with moving things forward that I never gave myself the [...]

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Attempting Sustainability

By on February 22, 2013 in Community Building, Impact Assessment, Social Entrepreneurship, Stories of Impact

You’ve heard the term “sustainability,” but have you thought about it outside of the environmental context? There are many ways in which social change programs can be unsustainable. Programs can be designed without a community’s real capacity, interest, or needs in mind. They can provide expensive and unfamiliar tools that community members don’t know how [...]

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It All Started in a Dorm Room.

By on November 16, 2012 in Featured, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey, Women's Empowerment, Youth Development

When people ask me how on earth I ended up starting my non-profit Women LEAD at the age of 20, I often don’t know what to respond. The process of starting Women LEAD is full of moments of luck meeting opportunity.  If you had told me 4 years ago that I would be co-founding a [...]

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Changing the World: One Minute at a Time

By on November 12, 2012 in Arts & Culture, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been involved in some kind of social good.  My parents were big supporters of giving back and helping out in our communities.  I don’t remember a time when we didn’t think about donating things or including people. Then when I entered school, community service became part of [...]

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The Problem with Philanthropists

By on November 5, 2012 in Community Building, Social Entrepreneurship, Stories of Impact

We should start with the basics: in our world, some have more than others. In fact, there is massive inequality to the extent that some people can barely survive. This bothers many of us (and probably most of us reading this website) because we believe that everyone’s basic needs should be met. So, to spur [...]

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Success in Social Enterprise: Finding Deep Joy in the Struggle

By on October 17, 2012 in Fashion

I’ve never been so reminded by the dichotomy present in my business as I have this season. Newly living in New York, driven to bring our collection and branding to a more concentrated place and feeling crunched by the deadline’s of shops needing to order their fall and winter collections, I have found myself, more [...]

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Beaten to the Punch: A Lesson Best Learned Early

By on October 10, 2012 in Social Entrepreneurship, Stories of Impact

I’m turning twenty in less than a month. For many, this birthday is virtually meaningless, no driver’s test to take, no voting privileges awarded, no toasts yet legally made. For me, however, it represents something new in my life; a whole new chapter and a whole new decade.  Try as I might to remain in denial, [...]

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New School, New City, New View

By on August 7, 2012 in Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

I wish I could say that I found and cultivated my interest in social innovation. In all honesty, it found me. After four years of high school participating in different philanthropic, charitable, and volunteer organizations, I hate to say that I started to resent the idea of making my social impact. After graduating, I formulated [...]

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