Welcome to October's GLI News Mail. News Mail keeps you up to date with What's New on the GLI website and introduces new GLI Networkers. So What's New this month? Social Entrepreneur Recognised The most exciting news of all this month was the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to a social entrepreneur - Professor Yunus. Founder of the Grameen Bank, Professor Yunus has done more than anyone else to lift the 'poorest of the poor' out of poverty and deprivation worldwide by lending small amounts of money to those that others said would never pay it back. This simple, brave act of faith and trust in ordinary people has enabled them to take control of their own lives and livelihoods and to become instruments of their own destiny. Many congratulations to Professor Yunus. Read more GLI News Also very exciting has been the GLI visit to China this month to attend the Social Innovation International Conference in Beijing hosted by the British Council, The China Centre for Comparative Politics and Economics and The Young Foundation. Two days packed with speeches, themed group discussions and feedback sessions and with frenzied networking in any spare time with participants from China and the UK but also from Brazil, Chile, Denmark, India and South Africa drawn from local government, academia, think tanks, the media, business, foundations and NGOs made for a stimulating and inspiring event. We used the opportunity of this visit to make contact with grass roots projects and with GLI Networkers in Beijing and Shanghai and have returned home full of inspiration and hopes for starting some practical social enterprise activity in the future with the groups we have met! Watch this space! Read more Another Global Links Initiative -The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur is published in Chinese
Robin Rowland attended the 26th International Fundraising Conference in the Netherlands and has reported on the three days of highly professional advice and networking opportunities. Again we made good contacts and generated much interest in Global Links Initiative. Read more New Language Websites planned Work is progressing on both a Tamil language GLI website and a French language one, both of which have been requested by GLI networkers who have kindly volunteered to make them happen with GLI assistance. We are very grateful. News Stories GLI attended the Pearl Awards in London - celebrating Chinese achievement in multi-cultural Britain - and was impressed anew by the range of projects and talents on display at this annual event. Read more What's New in the Share Area This has been a quiet month for the website but we have added two new items in Food for Thought in the Share Area. Bryan Howard from St Francis Hospice in South Africa sent us another of his thoughtful pieces - this time entitled 'Gratitude'. Read more
And we have published a moving piece from our first GLI Networker in Senegal - Pierre Nekamdje - 'The Talibe Story'. Here's an extract : - 'Talibes live often in appalling conditions where hunger, thirst and diseases are rampant. Begging is part of the coranic education. During day time, marabouts send their talibes out into the street to beg. They enquire a certain quota equivalent to one dollar a day, if the talibes do not meet the quota, they are severely beaten by their marabouts. The talibes are estimated at more than 120,000 in Senegal. Even though they receive some education from their religious teachers, this education is so limited that it cannot afford them decent employment. The consequence is that the talibes in future become either their marabout's disciples or unemployed.' Read more Yet More Networkers Join GLI Free! We now have more than 300 networkers from 35 countries and regions. 27 more have joined in the last month, 12 from China where we now have more than 70. This month the following have signed up with details in English. You can find details of the vast majority of our Networkers in the Get Involved section of the site under Networkers. Don't forget it is easy to update your Networker Profile Information - click 'Login' - enter your email address and password - click on Edit Profile - click Submit. Simple! Rajendra Rana, Alternative for Rural Movement (ARM), Balasore, Orrisa, India MISSION: Establishment of an equitable social order through motivation facilitation and self activity among backward rural communities with emphasis on women and children in the sphere of health education, human rights, economy and rural leadership. VISION: To find out an alternative strategy of rural social intervention and facilitate the NGO movement in the state of Orissa. MANDATES: - To facilitate empowerment, solidarity and leadership capacities of backward rural women and the under privileged social sections. - To sensitize, act and promote basic education, rural health, eco environment and quality of living in the problem villages. - To restore and strengthen the advocacy of human and child rights activities of vulnerable social categories concentrating on women and girls rights for preventing social discrimination and oppression. - To garner economic empowerment and rural self employment of socially handicapped sections through credit and savings, eco friendly sustainable agriculture, micro enterprises and establishment of a value chain based marketing network. - To conduct information networking, need based research, documentation and create a data base on all aspects of a prospective rural socio economy. Jill Ritchie, Papillon Press, South Africa Author of 24 books. Publishers of fundraising books. Trainer and consultant in fundraising. (We met Jill as one of the organisers of the SAIF Conference in Cape Town in May 2005 and are delighted she has joined as a Networker.) Boyok Noori, Asia Evergreen Holidays Corp. S/B, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia I am an Iranian with Bulgarian citizenship. I did help some NGOs in Middle East and even I made a safe place for supporting poor people in Iran. I would like to support poor people and the children, who don't have enough money and parents for their future and studying. I have my own business and can help them with part of my income. Please let me know how shall I take the first step in my target in helping poor children? Bathandwa Ndzulu, SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise), Mdantsane, Eastern Cape, South Africa I'm a student at the University of the Western Cape and I am a member of SIFE. SIFE equips and develops students and the community with life skills such as entrepreneurship, leadership, and management skills etc. Stephen Phillips, China-Britain Business Council, London, UK I have spent most of my adult life living and working throughout Asia and for a shorter time Southern Africa. I am currently CEO of CBBC, the UK's leading organisation helping British companies do business in China. We deliver a range of practical, cost-effective services to British companies wishing to export goods and services to, invest in, or establish manufacturing under license arrangements with China. J.Baskar Jayaraj, JSS, Thiruvarur, Tamilnadu, India Vocational training for dropout students, poor people, illiterate, neoliterate, widows. Sherry Li, Tax Justice Network, USA Sherry Li recently obtained her MA from Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute where she studied Chinese political transformation, rural development, and civil society. She also graduated from Renmin University, Beijing, China with a Master's degree in sociology. From 2002 to 2005, she worked with the EU-China Training Programme on Village Governance as a research and training expert, promoting grassroots democracy in villages in China. Anthea Liu, AIESEC, Shanghai, China I'm always passionately interested in issues and information about entrepreneur. And I'm now the director of AIESEC entrepreneur project in Fudan University. (We were delighted to meet Anthea at the round table meeting hosted by Mr Wu at the Shanghai YMCA on our recent visit to China.) Miaosen Gong, Politecnico di Milano, Italy I am a student of strategic design in Politecnico di Milano now and have much interest in social innovation. James Boamah Mensah, Obra Foundation, Adeiso, Ghana Obra Foundation is a Non-profit making, Non Governmental Organization formed in 1998, duly Registered with the Registrar General and Ministries of Social Welfare and Manpower Development respectively. It was formed by some committed Ghanaian individuals and two Dutch Philanthropists, who shared the same visions as the locals. It main aim is to source funding for development projects. It beliefs in participatory development and usually mobilizes the disadvantage rural communities to initiate projects geared to their hearts to solve pressing problems confronting them. The Organization target group of operation are children, youth and women, who are specially vulnerable in terms of social and economic development. We do also engage in advocacy programmes where we assist the voiceless in the society to fight their rights and mostly gender parity. The areas of operation are Education, Health and Sports. The organization is looking for any Donor/ Philanthropists and Humanitarian Institutions interested in any areas of her choice for funding, Networking, Partnership, Support, Affiliation or Collaboration to make the world a better and a safer place to live in, thus by our motto 'We Care and Support'. Selvam.p.v Selvam, Set-win, Tamilnadu, India Set-Win has been working to mobilize and empower the rural poor in Tamil Nadu since 1990. Its primary focus is on the Dalit community who, as members of the lowest caste, face continuing discrimination based on their economic, social and caste status. In order to reach its vision of a society free from this type of repression, Set-Win extends its solidarity to locally organized women's groups so that they can develop the skills and resources to become the leaders to their own liberation. Set-Win's programs aim to increase participation of Dalit women, children and youth in social, economic, and political activities in their communities. By training and promoting local women leaders, encouraging cooperative planning and decision-making, and facilitating collective action, Set-Win helps empower women to be agents of change for themselves and their communities. For more information please see our website. Mangaiyarkarasi J, Dr. Gordon Memorial Trust, Tamilnadu, India I am retired community health nurse and worked for 33 years in Govt public health department. My organisation is mainly working for promotion of health and developmental activities for rural and urban poor by health education, HIVAIDS awareness, nutrition education, care of AIDS patients, medical camps, cancer awareness and women empowerment and development. Jolanda Setz, Rotterdam, Netherlands (Jolanda is not a new Networker but has updated her profile for us, like others can as explained above.) About myself: Born in the Netherlands in 1960. After grammar school and University (Economics) I joined the insurance/banking industry for about 15 years, working in Rotterdam, London, Utrecht and for shorter periods in different countries worldwide (e.g. France, Venezuela, Australia). In 2001, I left my regular job to set up my own consultancy business. My motivation was a severe burn-out in which I discovered that I really wanted to help other people in life, believing that balanced people can make a difference for the well being of everybody. I studied a lot of personal growth and development courses where mental, psychological and material (body, money) issues are involved. Now I have my own consultancy and coaching business. I advise organisations or individuals finding their own inner strength and finding a way to balance more between ratio and intuition. I regard myself as a social entrepreneur. I just finished an interesting consultancy job for a foundation that wanted to help people with personal growth, especially for people confronted with cancer and their families. Not for the ' medical' side, but more for the mind-state. Interesting to tell that right now I am also working, as a volunteer, with a lot of neighbours, to look after one of our neighbours who is currently in her last stage of cancer. She has a wish to die at home. The way her daughter, the neighbours, her friends and the so called nursery home care work together is heartwarming. Even in our western, hard working, stressed society these things happen. I do support GLI, not only because I care for people and because I want to help people to help themselves, but also because I know that the founder(s) of GLI work from their hearts and I believe that 's the only way to make the world as a whole a better place to be. More peaceful and with more welfare to everybody. Currently my website is in Dutch, as I work mainly in Holland. I love to work international, so I'm working on an English translation. Quick Links Why not forward this News Mail to your contacts? We're happy for you to pass it on!
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