Local challenges around the world

This video builds on our discussion about locating social problems in our communities. What problems are the social entrepreneurs in this video working to solve? My name is Tom McGregor. I am originally from the UK and I’m the founder and director of Azizi Life, and I arrived in Rwanda in August, 2007. The idea behind Azizi Live was to take the artisans, as they were the group that was struggling the most, because back in 2007 predominantly, probably about 70 or 80 per cent of crafts were purchased by Rwandans. But Rwandans were only paying really the raw material cost and a little bit more they used for weddings and celebrations. But it wasn’t a good business for the artisans.

So a lot of them were doing crafts but it was more something of a hobby they’d do to fill in time, as opposed to an actual business.

My name is June O’Sullivan I am the Chief Executive of the London Early Years Foundation. I run a social enterprise childcare organization, which is made up of 38 community nurseries and we have developed a particular community model to try and meet the needs of disadvantaged families with other families, in one central spot. So in the UK at the moment, the childcare market is very mixed. So a high proportion of the services are provided by the private sector. So they are quite expensive, and they are also in areas of affluence.

So in cities like London, which are high cost, what you’re seeing is, instead of an increase in those children accessing those services, you’re seeing a decrease in children accessing those services. The second thing is, for some years now,

I think three governments actually now, so if you go back to the Labor Party, then the Coalition and now the Conservatives, they have been pushing for the idea of free childcare. Free doesn’t really quite do it. So it’s free to the parents to the point of access, but actually is not free to the providers, because again, it’s very poorly funded. My name is Richard LeBer, I am the Vice President of Finance and Strategy at the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

So my role is to supervise the finances and administration, as well as the strategic initiatives for the future of the Atlanta Community Food Bank and I’ve been here a little over two years, although I’ve been involved with the food bank as a board member and donor for probably 15 years. Atlanta is one of the largest cities in the US and is one of fastest growing cities in the US, and Atlanta is very much a cosmopolitan city. Obviously we’ve hosted the Olympics in 1996 and since then the city has grown by leaps and bounds. People come to Atlanta from all over the world, we have just about every ethnicity and language you can imagine.

There is a large racially mixed population here, a large African-American middle class, a growing Hispanic population. There are about 6 million people in the territory where the ACFB serves and about 900.000 of them are hungry. Hunger has changed. The people who are hungry in America are not the same as they used to be. They are primarily and predominantly the working poor, so the stereotype that they don’t have jobs and that’s why they are hungry simply isn’t true. Most of them are in the suburbs, they are not in the city, so the stereotype that they are, you know, city folk, isn’t true either.

My name is Vimlendu Jha and I’m the founder of Million Kitchen. We think that mobility is a barrier in developing countries. Women are not allowed to move out of their households, women are not allowed to feel free. Till the time that our society transforms each other, women cannot keep waiting for that one beautiful morning, when they will be allowed to be free. Till then, how can we use those boundaries, or those cultural reasons of patriarchy, how can we flip it, how can we disrupt it and use it in their benefit and that’s what we’re doing. Women, fine, their male counterparts do not allow them to move out of the house, fine, we’ll take the business to the house.

Their male counterparts, they’re all educated but they are not allowed to work in a office, fine, you’ll earn the same amount of money siting at your home.