A Really Vague Summary of the Social Action Project Explorations We Made

  We spent the last week learning about ways to carry out our social action projects.  We saw how others took their social action projects, and took it to new levels, like the Nobel Peace laureate, Muhammad Yunus. Prof. Yunus' foundation is the umbrella under which his pioneering creation, the social business Grameen Shakti (meaning "village power" in Bangla), operates. A social business operates as a middle ground between a charity, and a regular business. It is self-sustaining, and after initial investments are repaid in full, it is self-sustaining by it's own profits. Grameen Shakti has numerous products and projects that keep it afloat as a social business. The Grameen Bank, which is a different type of social business that specializes in a concept called "microlending",  is also self sustaining, but neither of the Yunus creations operate in a way that comprises the main goal of eradicating poverty. Pretty cool stuff, I'm sorry I suck at summarizing it. If you want, I can link you to their website, and you can learn about social business and microlending on your own terms and with more clarity: http://www.muhammadyunus.org/
    So we learned about social businesses, met with students and youth leaders whose projects saw tangible and very real success, and made huge differences in their communities. BYEI, a project started by an environmentally passionate student, is realizing the goal of connecting youth to the government and opening up their voices to policy. Yeah, again, I really suck at explaining how cool this shit really is, so here's a link to BYEI: http://byei.org/
    The point is, we saw many huge success stories with regards to social action projects. Now it's our turn. My social action project will be explained in another blog, coming in the near future.