ForSE 2009: Forum for Social Entrepreneurship Completes 3rd Succesful Year November 3, 2009
Posted by TiE Boston- "The Network for Entrepreneurs" in Social Enterpreneurship.add a comment
For the third year in a row, the annual ForSE Conference brought together a diverse crowd of social innovators, students, professionals and leading proponents to focus on the key issues and challenges in the social entrepreneurship area. Over 200 attendees contributed to make this conference a resounding success!
This year’s conference was organized around four tracks: Social Media, Sustainable Business Models, Valuing Social Ventures and Microfinance for Investors. A rich assembly of subject matter experts and entrepreneurs from the fields of Branding to Investment with a focus on social sectors gave the attendees insights from their experiences.
The afternoon was given to hands-on collaborative problem solving as the audience chose one of three Interactive Case-Based Sessions: Lokvani – which aims to be a public voice for the Indian community in New England, Peacetones – which uses music for social good in war-ravaged areas and Equal Exchange – an innovative fair trade workers cooperative. Using the varied perspectives available in the assembly, the audience helped to collectively strategize and come up with plans that could help these organizations diversify or grow towards achieving their noble aims.
The Keynote Addresses generated several interesting and useful perspectives for the entrepreneurs: Andre Porter of the Massachusetts Small Business and Entrepreneurship Office demonstrated the state’s support and backing for social entrepreneurship, while Carol Cone of Cone, LLC advised entrepreneurs to engage with corporate programs to form win-win partnerships, Babson College President Leonard Schlesinger urged entrepreneurs to be aware if others are doing similar things thereby avoiding fragmentation of the total effort applied to solve a problem while Pamela Hawley, Founder of Volunteer Match and Universal Giving told entrepreneurs to focus on achieving excellence and not perfection.
The highlight of this year’s conference was the new Pitching SE Contest. Twenty applicants from around the world had sent in applications to win the cash prize and free consultation from several organizations. The three chosen winners were Containers2clinics.org, which creates medical clinics out of shipping containers, Cyber Safety Campaign, which helps parents understand and mitigate online risks and Bottom of the Pyramid Energy and Environment Innovation, which develops pedal powered charging stations to get electricity to off-grid locations.
TIE Social Entrepreneurs core team consists of Vithal Deshpande, Manu Gosain, Rakesh Pandey, Ranjani Saigal and Raj Melville. They were supported by the TiE-Boston office and Esha Bawa from Net Impact Undergrad, Babson College. This year ForSE was supported by Hemang Dave, Puran Dang, Subu Kota, the Deshpande Foundation, and Lokvani.
