Social Entrepreneur of the Year Anshu Gupta: Creating a Parallel Economy with Reused Material

Event: Anshu Gupta: Creating a Parallel Economy with Reused Material
Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Location: Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Anshu Gupta, an Ashoka and Schwab Foundation Fellow shared his experiences creating a cultural change – from thoughtless dumping to conscious giving. He is the founder of GOONJ.org, a social enterprise that has created social innovations to address critical gaps in the developing world. Making clothing a matter of concern in the development sector emerged as his life’s calling with GOONJ.

Considered one of the leading social enterprises in India, GOONJ, brings to light under-resourced areas in development work; whether it’s clothing for the poor, cloth sanitary pads for women, or school materials for children. The organization addresses the growing gap between prospering cities and rural villages by moving resources from the former, who discard it as waste, to the later, for whom it is precious.

Anshu’s efforts have brought wider attention to the most ignored basic human need – clothing – and has led other organizations to replicate GOONJ’s initiatives and methods. Today people call it the genesis of a parallel economy where, instead of money, clothing works as currency received for work performed. Clothing, in Anshu’s words, “is not just a basic need but a symbol of dignity for all of us.”

View a video of his presentation:

See and download Anshu’s slides:

Accolades for Anshu Gupta and GOONJ:

A former journalist, Anshu left the corporate world to found GOONJ in 1998 and is now popularly known as the “Clothing Man”. Listed in Forbes as one of the India’s most powerful entrepreneurs, Anshu’s organization, GOONJ has won many prestigious awards including the Innovation for India award, Lien i3 challenge, CNN-IBN Real Hero’s Award, India NGO of the Year Award, Changemakers Innovation Awards and Development Market Place Award from the World Bank. GOONJ has also been chosen as a ‘Game Changing Innovation’ by NASA & US State dept. in a worldwide search & selection.  Anshu was named “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Schwab Foundation.  Learn more: www.ashoka.org/node/2523

 

Cal MBAs at Stanford’s Challenge 4 Charity Sports Weekend

Berkeley – Haas MBAs attended Challenge 4 Charity’s final event – Sports Weekend at Stanford on the weekend of April 19th. Year round, Haas’s C4C team competes with eight other West Coast business schools through volunteering and fundraising to support Special Olympics and other family-related charities. This year Haas accrued a total of 2000 volunteer hours across about 500 MBAs. As a whole, the 9 West Coast business schools raised $700,000 to support Special Olympics.

At Sports Weekend, the teams compete in 28 athletic and sporting competitions as a collaborative and fun event to culminate the year’s efforts and award the winners. Golf, basketball, softball, football, soccer, tennis, volleyball, and ultimate frisbee are only a few among the several competing activities that were held, not to mention parties throughout the weekend. USC’ Marshall School of Business was announced the overall winner that weekend, with a total of 6000 volunteer hours and $180,000 in fundraising money, while Stanford won the athletic competition.

Happy Earth Day from the Haas Green Team

Happy Earth Day!

This week is Earth Week and as leaders of campus sustainability we’re challenging everyone at Haas to help reduce our energy footprint. Together we can make simple changes every day to reduce energy consumption, lower costs, return funds to the school, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Attached is a Haas Energy Saving Checklist full of tips and tricks for saving energy at work and at home. Be sure to check it out, take action, and pass it on!

Save energy and the environment this week and every week!

Thank you,

The Haas Green Team

Evin Guy, Program Coordinator, Center for Nonprofit & Public Leadership

Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

510.643.1869 | evin_guy | nonprofit.haas.berkeley.edu

Haas Earth Day Energy Checklist.pdf

Social Impact Career Mentoring for Current Haas MBA

Ben Hamlin, a current Haas MBA, attended a a social impact career mentoring session on February 22nd with Wes Selke, a Haas alum. Wes, who graduated as a Haas MBA in 2007, is the Founding Director of Hub Ventures, a start-up accelerator for entrepreneurs leveraging the power of technology to build a better world, and has much experience in the social sector.

Ben Hamlin Haas MBA

“Wes was the perfect person to speak to given his career to date and involvement with Haas.  His extensive experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors enables Wes to provide balanced advice to change seekers.  Moreover, Wes is an active Haas alum and knows how Haas can help students achieve their goals.” – Ben Hamlin

Wes shared how he had bridged the gap between his career in finance and the social sector as Ben works to make that transition. He was the ideal person to speak to about how to leverage all of Haas’ resources and was able to help Ben in his process of deliberating for potential summer positions by sharing what his own thought process had been.

“As a mentor, Wes really showed that your career path is long; the the position you get before or after business school does not define your career. There are a lot of ways to approach social impact in one’s career.”

Career mentoring is a program facilitated by the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership for students who are interested in social impact careers.

Fall 2012 S3SE Students Follow Up with Client

Kota, Archana, Roy, Xiadong, and Paulina had worked with a SF-based social venture capital firm last fall through the S3 Social Enterprise class at Haas. Last month, the group met for lunch in San Francisco to follow up with their clients. Kota, who is graduating as a Haas MBA this May, was the team lead as they worked to build a database of the financial impact of social ventures to prove their dual impact to potential investors.

Kota Fukasawa – team lead

“Our clients shared the great news with us – they have been using our documents in meetings with their clients, and the reactions to our paper are ‘amazing’. They said that they were using the documents like a teaser and the results on the documents should be ‘directional’, but the impact is outstanding.” – Kota Fukasawa

A student from Japan who works for McKinsey-Tokyo, Kota came to Haas to develop his business skills and understand the social sector in the US. After completing his MBA, he aims to go back and develop the slim social sector in  Japan. He says that this class has helped him gain confidence in his leadership and ability to manage teams  by serving as the middleman for all the stakeholders in the project.

“I would recommend this class for MBA students because it’s a great chance to step back from the daily MBA life – you can’t be successful by just applying one specific skill, it is an opportunity to bring all the skills and resources together. “

The S3SE class will be offered in Fall 2013 (refer to the course webpage). MBAs can bid on MBA292S-1 and non-MBAs must fill out an application available on the course webpage by April 26th.

Giving Away a $10,000 Grant to a Nonprofit Organization in Cal Strategic Philanthropy

Cal Strategic Philanthropy is a course offered by CNPL to allows students to have the opportunity to give away a $10,000 grant to a nonprofit organization that they decide upon as a class. This semester, our class decided to split the grant into two $5,000 grants. Our final presentations are this Thursday, after which we will deliberate which two organizations of the four we are representing will receive the grants.

Haas Undergrad Shreya Dhingra

The number one lesson I have learned from this class is that it is so easy to fall in love with every single nonprofit organization you come across just by looking at their values and mission. A great deal of assessment is required to make a strategic and worthwhile philanthropic donation. My team is representing Not In Our Town, an organization that addresses hate crime in the US.

Our site visit to NIOT’s office in Oakland was a great learning experience to pool together everything we had learned from the course to make an accurate assessment of their work, impact, financial health, future goals, and leadership. The hardest task is to properly balance the appeal to both the head and the heart of your audience as you seek funding.

If you are interested in making a real impact with real money, take a look at the course webpage.