Last night I attended the Unreasonable Institute’s Inaugural Launch event in Boulder with my good friend and social innovator, Lucinda.

The Institute does this, “We unite up to 25 high-impact social entrepreneurs from around the world to attend our intensive 10-week summer institute. There, we will incubate their ventures with rigorous skill training and expert mentorship. At the end of the ten weeks, we will connect our Fellows with the start-up capital and global network of support needed to give their ventures wings.”

Who Gives a Crap

Each institute member was given 2 minutes to answer the question, “Who are you to define progress in our time?”  Some themes emerged.

• Most of them said they did not define progress in our time.   Rather, they pointed to the people, the communities, the countries and the children that their products or services helped.  Women who sought education where none is offered, children who pull themselves out of poverty with micro businesses, toilet paper that builds toilets and more.
• The focus is on innovation & learning not charity.  The underpinning of social entrepreneurship is NOT to create a bunch of non-profits who beg for money and hand it out.  Social innovation uses business solutions to solve social problems.  Facilitate getting tools into their hands or minds and let them thrive.
• Progress isn’t perfect but YOU define it on whatever terms you need.

Uber Shelter

Thrive!  We learned that the simplest things can quite literally change an entire community.

• Use a bicycle to hull corn 40 times faster and pay off the cost of this bike in 2.5 months!
• Purchase toilet paper and build sanitary bathroom facilities for 1 million people.
• Burn agri-waste and get carbon negative returns.
• Let a vision impaired person identify their money with a color reading gadget.
• Make a humane, 3 room home after a natural disaster with a wrench and a pallet of materials that can be carried by 2 people.

Get involved, get inspired, change the world.