More Social Entrepreneurs Improve The World
By Carolyn Hoyt
PINK found women social entrepreneurs across the country, from a Vermont woman preventing domestic violence, to another in Kansas City with a boot camp for parents of abused children, to a California woman who opened schools for children on Mexico's border.
A Helping Woman in Need
Who: Andrea Silbert, 41, of Boston
What: Harvard-educated with three degrees
(undergraduate,master's in business, master's in public
administration), Silbert left her Morgan Stanley job and
founded the Center for Women and Enterprise,
a $2.5 million nonprofit offering advisory services to
women in need.
How: She wrote a business plan and applied for grants
from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which
gave her $150,000 for years. The Bank of Boston kicked
in some matching money, as did the state of
Massachusetts.
Silbert: "It was incredibly hard, like blowing up a
life raft with your mouth. Most people stop blowing,
but we just keep putting one foot in front of the other."
School for Thought
Who: Christine Brady, 48, of Chula Vista, Calif.
What: Dismayed by the conditions she found in a
Mexican border settlement, Brady raised funds to build a
school for the community's children. The Americas
Foundation programs fund two early learning schools:
Jardin de Ninos La Esperanza and Colegio La Esperanza.
In addition to teaching the three Rs, Brady created a
curriculum that includes gardening, music and ballet.
How: She found an architect willing to donate his time to
build a beautiful and innovative building. The
Foundation spends $150,000 a year to operate the
schools, raising money from Brady's fellow Princeton
alumni, foundations from small churches of different
denominations and various scholarship sponsors.
Brady: I wanted to put myself into this project. I've got
more boys in ballet than any school in the world."
A Broad Vision
Who: Wynona Ward, 54, of Chelsea, VT.
What: Back in 1998, Ward realized that rural Vermont
women suffering from domestic violence needed a lot
more than lawyers. They needed transportation to get to
a lawyer and money to pay court fees. Her solution,
Have Justice Will Travel, has a $5000,000 budget,
employs five attorneys and offers what she calls a
"holistic multi-service model" to try to break the cycle of
violence that can thrive in remote areas.
How: For seed money, Ward applied for a fellowship at
Equal Justice, receiving $32,500 for the first year. She
later got a grant of $363,000 over two years from the
Department of Justice and a fellowship from Ashoka,
another social entrepreneurial venture.
Ward: " We have a website and a database that promote
awareness, and we get donations from all over the
world. My biggest donation so far this year was from
someoe in France."
Old Problem, New Solution
Who: Aimee Thompson, 33, of Boston.
What: Thompson's Close to Home is tackling domestic
violence in one Boston neighborhood. She sets up
"kitchen table talks" in the homes of community
members to address domestic violence at the source.
How: Her first funding, an $85,000 multiyear grant, came
from the Boston Police Department.
Thompson: "One of the most dangerous calls a
policeman makes is to a residence where domestic
violence is reported. Tempers are running hot, and
there's often a weapon involved."
Reinventing Social Justice Methods
Who: Dana Fitzer, 41, of Kansas City, Mo.
What: A licensed social worker, Fitzer realized standard
therapies for parents who abused their kids were
insufficient to address the issue. Her Wake Up! Boot
Camp is a 60-day retreat with peer modeling based on
Alcoholics Anonymous. Parents are forced to confront,
support and learn about what they have done to their
own kids in a series of intensive, confrontational
weekends. At the end of the program, a report
recommends to the state whether or not a family should
be reunited.
How: Fitzer and her colleagues used more than $60,000
in personal savings to Wake Up!
Fitzer: "The amount of time allotted by the state was too
short for the parents to rehabilitate, but too long for the
kids to be languishing in foster care, not knowing if
they'd ever reunite with their birth parents."
*** For further reading on social entrepreneurship:
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein (Oxford University Press, Dec.2003).
