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Global SE wins prestigious award

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

The College of Wooster’s Global Social Entrepreneurship (Global SE) program was cited for excellence by the Institute of International Education (IIE). IIE, which also administers the Fulbright program, honored Global SE with the Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education — specifically internationalizing the campus through business education — at the Sixth Annual Best Practices in Internationalization Conference on March 18 in New York City.

Co-Founders: Marianne Sierocinski and Moledina recieve award from Dr. Goodman, President of IIE.

Designed by-and-for students, alumni, staff, and faculty, Wooster’s Global SE program promotes global citizenship and social entrepreneurship. “It provides a life-changing international experience for students who are actively involved in the planning and implementation of the course development and entrepreneurial experience,” said Amyaz Moledina, co-architect of the program as well as assistant professor of economics and co-director of Wooster’s Center for Diversity and Global Engagement. “Student participants gain a rich appreciation of the global issues that are facing social enterprises in both the U.S. and India. Those who have completed the program have taken what they have learned and innovated. Examples include a student that began documenting the conditions of migrant farmers in North Carolina, a student that decided to work in a rural eye hospital in India, and a student who used what learned in her own nonprofit in Ghana. Other participants have designed majors around global international development and social enterprise solutions.”

Global SE Students, CSIM Staff and Board, SEOP Course Graduates outside SIET

Erika Takeo, a sophomore from Portland, Ore., said she wanted to be a part of the program because of its hands-on approach to learning. “It is not simply a class where you show up, take notes, and study for exams,” she said. “As in any case where you are working for social change, you must engage completely with the issues and people you are trying to help.”

Marianne Sierocinski, a senior urban studies major from Davie, Fla., said that one of GSE’s major strengths is its structure as a student-driven initiative. “The experience empowers us to embrace ambiguity, take risks, and think creatively in the face of complex challenges,” she said. “It was an incredible learning opportunity for me to contribute so tangibly to the program’s development, transforming a business plan I helped write in 2009 into a program I participated in this past summer.”

The program has two primary components: an on-campus seminar in the spring and a six-week experiential-learning association with social enterprises in Bangalore, India, in the summer. This past year, the group collaborated with Dream a Dream, an internationally recognized Indian organization that works with underprivileged children to inculcate life skills. Another team of three students also worked with EnAble India, an organization that provides innovative training and placement services to Fortune 500 companies for people with disabilities.

The objective, according to Moledina, is not only to provide experiential learning opportunities to train the next generation of global social entrepreneurs, but also to be of value to client organizations. “Most programs of this kind are engaged with organizations for short periods,” he said. “We try to work with these organizations over a longer period of time. Each year, a new group of students takes over where the previous group left off. Were it not for our partners like the Center for Social Initiatives and Management, Experiential Travels, Sattva Consulting, and other social enterprises and individuals like Lilly Paul and Sampath of Arpitha who we worked closely with in Bangalore, we would not have been a success. Even more strongly, our alumni such as Jairaj Daniel, showed early support and were instrumental in ensuring we succeeded and continue to thrive. Our business model is based on collaboration, and awards like this indicate that Wooster’s program is distinctive.

“Business education is unusual at liberal arts schools,” added Moledina. “Even more so, a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving that welcomes students from a range of majors, such as international relations, communications, math, economics, and sociology is equally unique.”

IIE President and CEO Allan E. Goodman indicated that this year’s Heiskell Award winners represent some of the world’s best initiatives in internationalizing higher education. “As institutions continue to innovate, taking their internationalization efforts to new heights and depths, we look forward to continuing our tradition of recognizing their commitment to excellence and meeting the global mandate of our time,” he said.

The Institute of International Education awards are designed to promote and honor the most outstanding initiatives in international higher education by IIE Network member universities and colleges. In recognizing excellence and innovation, the Institute hopes to support them in their endeavors and to signal a new and important role for international education on campus.

“Global SE is an innovative program that embraces our core values and enables our students to realize their full potential as engaged scholars and global citizens,” said College of Wooster President Grant Cornwell. “It also prepares them to make significant contributions to our complex and interdependent world.”

Alumni Trustee Sandeep Bhatia added, “It is an honor for Wooster to be recognized for what it has done best since its founding: putting students and faculty together to understand complex issues. Global SE is a new model that seeks to integrate staff and alumni minds together with Wooster’s core competency of student-faculty collaboration in the direction of entrepreneurship for the global good.”

Tags: Award, Entrepreneurship, Global SE, Program
Posted in Amyaz Moledina, Featured | 2 Comments »

Social Entrepreneruship 2011 begins

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Vishal Talreja, Wooster's first Intl Entrepreneur in Residence with the 2010 Global SE Team.

Twenty-ten was a great year! Highlights include the launch of Global SE, hosting Wooster’s first International Entrepreneur in Residence and administrative commitments to ensure that Global SE remains part of the Global Engagement landscape at Wooster as we move forward with strategic planning. We begin this new year with considerable excitement and energy!

Local SE Team for 2011

We have recruited two new staff to our ranks: Cezar Mesquita and Charles Laube, both from Admissions. We have an SE first! Carolyn Ciriegio, an SE alum who works in alumni relations (I did not make that up!) has returned to lead a team! Carolyn says “I never imagined I would be back to implement the recommendations that I wrote as a student when I last worked with SE and AMRE.” Local SE is excited to work with four new clients this year — Main Street Wooster, Wooster Community Hospital, Wooster Local Roots, and Wayne County Sustainable Energy Network. Twelve students have been recruited to begin the local seminar on Friday Jan 14th.

Four students have been admitted into Global SE: Sarrah Abboud, Kipaya Kapiga, Sam Susanin and Erika Takeo. In May we will return to work with Dream a Dream and ENAble India. In the meantime, the Global SE students will study the problems given to us by the organizations in India and understand the Indian social enterprise landscape as well as the challenges of eliminating poverty.

In the meantime, I have been “playing with technology”. Below is a neat educational Prezi that I put together last night, based on Dr. Seuss’s “Oh the places you will go.” After watching it, it should be clear that the entrepreneurial ecosystem is alive and well at the College of Wooster.

All the places you will go on Prezi

Tags: Global SE, Program, Social Entrepreneurship
Posted in Amyaz Moledina, Featured | No Comments »

Scaling new heights

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Seven undergraduates design academic experience and work with social enterprises in India

Summer internships help college students acquire valuable life skills, but Amyaz Moledina, associate professor of economics at The College of Wooster, and a multidisciplinary team of students have taken the concept to a new level with the Global Social Entrepreneurship problem-based learning experience.

The program is similar to Wooster’s Applied Mathematics Research Experience (AMRE), which assigns exceptional mathematics and computer science majors to serve as consultants for businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations.

The latest endeavor has been “quite a few years in the making,” according to Moledina. “We were looking for ways in which to innovate from the AMRE model. We thought, why not try to do what we do so well in our local community, globally?”

As Director of Social Entrepreneurship, Moledina asked a team of students to design a unique global social entrepreneurship program that had a field component. Students designed and wrote a comprehensive social entrepreneurship education plan. On the strength of this plan, Moledina and one of his students, Marianne Sierocinski, traveled to India the previous summer to visit with 10 organizations and begin constructing a framework for the seminar and field experience. Moledina then organized and received approval for a special preparatory seminar. “We tried to set-up a situation where we could observe a problem through the lens of an organization that works with people in need,” he says. “The design of the seminar was unique in that I put the students in the driver’s seat and let them take charge of the learning process. I think this is the first time students have been involved in designing their own academic experience. I know of few other academic experiences that begin from a student-authored business plan.”

Shortly after the seminar ended in May, the students began their field experience, which recently concluded in Banglore, India. Student teams provided consulting services for two internationally recognized local social enterprises: Dream a Dream, which works with underprivileged children to inculcate life skills, and Enable India, which provides training and placement services to Fortune 500 companies for people with disabilities.

“Our goal has been to help the students use their skills to understand and solve the problem given to them,” says Moledina. “What’s interesting and exciting is that the problem is always evolving and ambiguous. This rarely happens in a regular academic experience.”

Dream a Dream is hoping to improve its impact assessment on the children it serves, and the Wooster students have been deeply involved in the effort. Enable India wants to look at various business models so that the organization can reach more people with its services, and Wooster students invested their critical thinking skills in that project as well.

The two organizations benefit from the free service, and the students, who come from a range of academic disciplines (including sociology, anthropology, economics and international relations), benefit from the experience of working with people of different age groups from different cultures.

“I believe that if we truly are a college that changes lives, we need to empower our students to learn continuously and help them connect to the world,” says Moledina. “The global landscape is changing rapidly, and we need to give students a chance to experience it as it happens. Their vision is evolving, and I don’t want to put any limits on it.”

To learn more about the students’ experience check out their blog and see the pictures on Flikr.

Tags: Global SE, Non-profit organizations, Program, Social Entrepreneurship
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Students present ideas for social change!

Friday, April 30th, 2010

While most people celebrated Easter by taking a break, twelve students diligently put final touches to business plans for local non-profits. This years’ local SE group worked with four organizations: Goodwill, Every Woman’s House, Wooster City Schools and Cleveland Jazz Orchestra (CJO). In preparation for their final pitches to the Board of Directors of their respective organizations, students presented their plans to a group of their peers on Saturday, April 2 .

Early communication suggests that this year was a success. Erika Federman of CJO said, our “board was impressed-as am I-by the quality of your work and by your professionalism. I loved your presentation-you did a wonderful job of presenting a LOT of information in a very succinct, easy to digest manner. Your instincts and your line of thinking/questioning have been right on point. We will be implementing some of your suggestions in the very near future.”

Chris Miller presents Goodwill's Recycling Project

Students also report high levels of satisfaction. For example, Josh Madsen ’10 who worked with Goodwill Industries said, “Working in the capacity of business consultants through the social entrepreneurship program provided our team with a sense of confidence. Learning how to interact with a group of passionate and motivated student consultants taught our teams valuable collaborative skills that we will undoubtedly draw upon in a professional work environment.” Chris Miller ’11 also commented that the program “demands creativity, passion and versatility from students to be effective in ultimately satisfying the client. I am now comfortable communicating… with a wide range of professionals and entrepreneurs.”

To see more pictures of the day, follow our Flikr photostream.

Tags: Non-profit organizations, Program, Social Entrepreneurship
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SE 2010 Update

Friday, March 26th, 2010

The SE program at the College of Wooster began 2010 in a growth mode. The SE program uses an experiential learning or “live case” approach. It promotes social entrepreneurship and problem solving by connecting clients with real organizational problems and student teams to find meaningful solutions. This year there are two parts to the program, a local seminar/internship and a global experience.

The local seminar is 12 students and a small group of teaching faculty. The are working for a variety of Northeast Ohio non-profits. The four projects this semester are:

The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra. Deliverable: Create a marketing plan.
Wayne County Board of Education. Deliverable: Develop, scope and sequence a technology-focused (in service) Waiver Day for 2010.
Every Woman’s House. Deliverable: A process analysis for an intervention program, and
Goodwill of Wayne and Holmes County. Deliverable: Write a business plan for a new venture.

These projects are advised by Dr. Lisa Verdon (Economics), Dr. Matthew Broda (Education) and Ms. Theresa Ford (Director of Assessment), Dr Jen Roche (Mathematics) and finally Dr. Russ Ormiston (Economics).

Global SE is an inter-cultural, inter-generational, experiential-learning, problem-based experience with two components – an on-campus seminar and an international experiential-learning consultancy. This experience was designed and developed by Wooster students last year. Facilitated by Moledina, a group of eight students, selected from a group of 25 of the best applicants to the program, are preparing to consult with social enterprises in Bangalore. They will work with Dream-a Dream and Enable India beginning in May 2010 and be supported by a local capacity building enterprise called the Center for Social Initiatives and Management.

Dream a Dream seeks to empower children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills and at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society where unique differences are appreciated.
Enable India seeks to empower people with disabilities by offering training and job placement services.

To prepare themselves students partake in inter-cultural training, designing their own curriculum within the parameters of the project and are attending a heady number of seminars and on campus events. Part of the class is a series of guest lectures.

For example, students met Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief for The Economist. Philanthrocapitalism, his 2008 book (with Michael Green) on the business of philanthropy was described as “terrific” by the New York Times, and called “the definitive guide to a new generation of philanthropists who understand innovation and risk-taking and who will play a crucial part in solving the biggest problems facing the world,”

The SE program also designed a Social Venture Capital Clinic for students and clients. We welcomed Nell Edgington of Social Velocity, Jennifer Thomas of the Civic Innovation Lab and other notable speakers on January 30th in historic Kauke Hall in Wooster. The Clinic gave SE students and clients the opportunity to learn about HOW social enterprises fund their mission. Through interactive workshops led by practitioners, participants understood and gained practical tools to access the variety of financing options that exist for social ventures including non-profits. Some tips from the Clinic have already convinced some students to access funding from Sparkseed.

Finally, the SE program will jointly fund summer fellowships in innovative urban gardening projects in Northeast Ohio. Stay tuned for announcements.

Tags: Non-profit organizations, Program, Social Entrepreneurship
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Alumni spotlight: Rashmi Ekka

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

From time to time, Wooster alumni that are engaged in poverty reduction or social entrepreneurship will post to this blog. Below is a thought piece by Rashmi Ekka. Ekka graduated in 2008 with an economics degree. Her Independent Study empirically assessed the efficiency and profitability of microfinance organizations with a focus on group lending. Rashmi’s goal is to create financial institutions that are both socially and financially sustainable. While at Wooster she received a fellowship to attend StartingBloc’s Institute for Social Innovation and also developed a plan to start a microfinance institution for Adivasi’s (Sanskrit for indigenous peoples). Ekka works in DC as a finance
consultant for an international development firm. She is co-founder of Adivasi Development Network

Mainstreaming Socially Responsible Finance and Balancing Mission Drift

In the last edition of the Economist, there was an article which proclaimed that financial innovation for the poor had a place in society.[i] For the past thirty years microfinance practitioners all over the world, starting from Bangladesh to Brazil have been building up the microfinance industry and have taken financial services to over 100 million poor people (more than half of who are women) who were thought to be “unbankable.”

In the first 20 years, most microfinance institutions were non-profit organizations. Their focus was more on achieving social benefits and not much consideration was given to rigorous business practices such as internal controls, risk management and achieving financial sustainability. Repayment rates were high (often in excess of 95%) but many institutions continued to depend on donor financing. Even so, with its growth the microfinance sector became very vibrant, with each country having its own unique challenges and corresponding innovations. In India, where democracy and civil society movements and organizations are firmly entrenched, microfinance took on the form of self-help groups where women organized themselves into small groups and started saving in a common fund and using the group to access credit. These groups then consolidated themselves into federations, further bolstering the institutional structure and the women’s economic power.

In the 90s, there was a push in the microfinance industry for increased financial sustainability. Policy makers in many countries caught up with the sector and put in place enabling microfinance policies including the opportunity to start offering deposit services. Slowly some of the best microfinance institutions started reaching scale and becoming financially self sufficient.

With the increasing popularity of corporate social responsibility, microfinance has become the best answer to socially responsible investment needs. Armed with remarkable social and financial returns, microfinance institutions make good candidates for formal financing through the global capital markets. On the other hand, the big investors have found out that social investing does not only earn them karma points which are well-respected in the financial industry but also the diversification in the portfolio has proved to be a good risk management strategy during the global financial crisis. Calvert Foundation’s Community Investment Notes (bonds) have performed very well during the crisis and now there are several opportunities for institutional and individual investors to invest in microfinance.[ii]

In business there are always trade-offs. With all this good news from the commercial investors, many microfinance practitioners are concerned that they might not be able to adequately balance their financial responsibility with their social responsibility. SKS India is one of the biggest and the most successful microfinance institutions in the world with over 5 million clients. SKS has attracted a lot of interest from investors and those who are in, are expected to make a tidy sum. SKS is soon expected to have its first IPO and many in the industry are worried that the microfinance institution might suffer from mission drift – i.e. become so commercially oriented that its social mission is compromised.

So where does Microfinance go from here? The microfinance industry and generally the social finance industry is in a good place to be. Many industry experts have already banded up together to ensure that microfinance remains a double bottom line industry, i.e. be socially and financially responsible.[iii] With the industry being so quick in addressing mission drift, as well as accessing global capital markets for finance, the microfinance industry should continue to grow at a remarkable pace, expanding outreach to the many poor who are still unbanked. The current size of the industry is estimated at $25 billion and the market demand is estimated at over $250 billion. Let’s hope that microfinance is able to deliver on its promise!

[i] You can read the article brief here:

[ii] If you have $20 (or more) to spare and would like to make a microfinance investment, help the poor around the world and make anywhere between 1% to 6% annual interest rate go to www.microplace.com

[iii] Microfinance practitioners have come together under the Social Performance Management Taskforce to ensure that the microfinance industry can be socially and financially responsible. To learn more about this, read the Social Performance Management Guide.

Tags: Adivasi, Microfinance, Social Entrepreneurship
Posted in Alumni, Amyaz Moledina, Featured | No Comments »

Migrant farmworkers in North Carolina

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

Visual culture can be used as an instrument for social change. Our SE Program Associate, Laura Valencia ‘12 spent the summer of 2009 working for Toxic Free in North Carolina.

She researched the risks that pesticide exposure poses to migrant workers. Her picture documentary is posted on Photo Philanthropy. Also her video documentary is on the Toxic Free site. She won the 2009 student award from Photo Philanthropy! Congratulations, Laura!

Tags: Farmworkers, migrants, pesticide
Posted in Alumni, Amyaz Moledina, Featured | No Comments »

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