Echoing Green Announces Social Entrepreneurs Selected as 2010 Fellows Part 3 of 3

In addressing social issues, services are as crucial as technologies and products in promoting community-wide development, sustainability and well-being. Here are some of the 2010 Echoing Green Fellows that are providing just such vital services where they are most needed.

• Farm Builders, a social enterprise designed to spur local investment,provides management services and access to long-term investment capital to smallholder tree crop farmers in Liberia's impoverished, rural communities. By creating joint ventures with individual farmers so they can rehabilitate their farms, Farm Builders securitizes future cash flow from all holdings, providing off-take and investment guarantees to lower aggregate repayment risks. Development fees are assessed along with proceeds from a percentage of future latex sales to fund technical assistance, marketing and expansion to new areas, mixing social enterprise with fee-for-service operations.


• Enzi, which means'powerful' in Swahili,is an equity-based education funding enterprise developed to eliminate financial barriers to education through people to people social investing. People are invited to invest in the education of bright students in exchange for a share in their future income for a fixed period of time to ensure everyone has access to a great education. By creating a new social asset class, Enzi unleashes human potential to move financial markets.


• Bamyan Media advances the third sector, accelerating social enterprise and its evolution by harnessing the power of mass media to showcase and celebrate successful social entrepreneurs, while educating millions of viewers on successful social venture models, and their impact, through reality TV competitions. Founded globally to distribute and co-produce an original reality TV competition that rewards the insight and innovation exhibited by successful social entrepreneurs, the reality TV series teaches the skills necessary to develop a successful business to viewers. Harnessing the power of mass media to inspire the next troupe of leaders and accelerate the spread of social innovation, Bamyan works to make social entrepreneurship a valiant yet realistic aspiration for virtually everyone.