Partnership opportunities

In this video, social entrepreneurs talk about their partnerships and how useful these have been to sustain their businesses. As you watch, think about the current or potential partners your business works with. We have worked with a large number of governments. To this day, more than 5 million children have benefited from Escuela Nueva. through creating alliances. Not only alliances with the government, but also with the private sector In Colombia, the Coffee Guild has been an excellent partner, in helping with our rural schools. But in every country we try to find an appropriate partner. We’re working a lot with the actual institutions the children were placed there for protection.

So either they’ve been taken off the streets or they’ve been taken away from families, because of difficult things in the families. So the girls would be from Hogar de la Luz, which was mainly girls, whatever their past was they’ve been taken away and put in there. And then Casa Marcelina was boys that just turned up on the streets and they collect the in. Ruralive is an initiative founded by the GCL, which is a social enterprise accelerator created by Professor Muhammad Yunus. Ruralive was one of the first three programs in Colombia founded to promote social businesses.

Originally, the project was named “Como en Casa” and it was created to improve the housing conditions of the peasant families, through the chain value of rural tourism. The main idea is that local families host tourists, national and international providing them the experience of living in the countryside as well as an overall cultural exchange. The Brixton Pound was launched by volunteers with the support of local businesses, who actually provided some of the start-up money to help us print paper notes. We contacted the local council while we were still in the development phase, because I think it was acknowledged that having the support of the local council could really make the difference.

So we wanted to think about how we could make this last beyond, you know, the six month honey moon period after the launch, and the Council is the biggest player in the game, you know, they are the biggest spender in the Borough, and they can lend a lot of credibility to the idea of a local currency.