Hello from SITAWI,
SITAWI at Harvard
SITAWI took part in the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference in Cambridge, MA in February. . In its 14 th year, the gathering of more than 1500 social entrepreneurs has established an impressive track-record for attracting inspiring speakers, skill-building workshops and panels, and networking events, including the Pitch for Change social innovation ideas contest and a social enterprise career fair. This year’s topic was “Create. Connect. Commit.” and encouraged participants to find new and innovative forms of creating and leading change. Originally scheduled over two days, the conference was disrupted by winter weather. Even so, our CEO, Leonardo Letelier, was part of a panel that looked at the evolution of social businesses around the world.
A more efficient social sector
In 2013, SITAWI is carrying out a study into alliances and mergers between social sector organizations in Brazil.
Inspired by the business sector, some organizations in Brazil are looking at tools to increase scale, efficiency or impact, such as collaborating with other organizations to integrate back offices, create franchises or merge.
The advantages of this type of initiative include reducing costs, generating more resources (by combining “brands” to create a joint budget for marketing, communication and fundraising), or increasing impact (by taking the best of each intervention to serve the same public).
As part of the project’s current phase, SITAWI is interviewing experienced professionals and sector leaders to publicize case studies from Brazil and other countries and to identify best practices.
Stay tuned for the results!
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Hello from SITAWI!
We are excited to announce that eleven outstanding nonprofit leaders have been named Synergos Senior Fellows, becoming part of network of 144 current and alumni Fellows from more than 50 countries, and SITAWI´s CEO - Leonardo Letelier - was named one of them.
Synergos Senior Fellows are selected based on their vision for change, skills, knowledge, experience, and the impact of their work on the communities and countries they serve. Through the Senior Fellows program, Synergos links these leaders to a worldwide learning, support and action network. The overall goal of the program is to strengthen the capacity and opportunities of these leaders to build partnerships that address the systemic causes of poverty and promote sustainable social change.
SITAWI supports Solidarium.net
SITAWI is a pioneer in developing financial solutions for the social sector in Brazil. It was thanks to one of SITAWI’s products, the social loans, that one of our first clients, Solidarium, a social enterprise that supports small-scale artisans to access larger markets and chain stores, was able to fulfill a contract for 30,000 recycled plastic bags for Walmart in 2009. The contract changed the direction of the company, allowing it to survive its first year in business and flourish.
Solidarium is now growing fast and is currently developing a new business strategy to create Solidarium.net – an online marketplace, which aims to connect artisans from all over Brazil directly with the consumers and shops. SITAWI – Finance for Good is proud to be supporting Solidarium once again and wishes them success with this initiative!
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Hello from SITAWI!
We have been busy in Brazil with the Social Enterprise World Forum, which was organized by NESsT and brought together social enterprises (nonprofits and for-profits) from all over Brazil, Latin America and the rest of the world. It showcased social enterprises that are really changing Brazil, including organizations that connect handicraft workers with mainstream retail chains, deliver mail to favelas, run recycling programs in Amazonia or create fashion out of recycled materials. It also gave us lots of new projects that we hope to be able to fund soon. And of course, we’ll let you know once we do.
CIES, our current loan client, has also been successful and has sent its Health Wagon (Carreta de Saúde) to São José dos Campos in São Paulo state, where it has already provided quality healthcare to 16,600 people. The renovation of the vehicle was funded with a loan that included resources from our GlobalGiving campaign. In August, they set their Health Box to a women’s prison in São Paulo where they carried out 300 procedures, including mammograms, blood pressure and blood-sugar level tests, and other general procedures. The success of CIES means that they have also been able to raise funds to build a second Health Box, which will concentrate on men’s health throughout Brazil and was launched in October. Congratulations!
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