Future Competitions & Projects
Below is a "preview" of upcoming projects and competitions from the S.E.VEN Fund. Our intent in doing this is two-fold: first, we welcome feedback and ideas on the proposed programs (link to our feedback page) and secondly, we want to build awareness of our forthcoming activities.
Title: Request for Proposals: "Creating an Index to Evaluate Social Entrepreneurship Organizations."
Expected release date: June 30th
Brief description: Next in the SEVEN Fund series of academic RFPs, this program seeks innovative proposals from academics (or teams of academics) to create an index to objectively evaluate the effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of today's top Social Entrepreneurship organizations. $500,000 in awards.
Title: The Poor Are Awake
Expected Release Date: Due out in Spring 2009 from Templeton Press.
Brief description: This forthcoming essay book features contributions from SEVEN Fund leaders Fairbanks, Widmer, and Hooper, along with past and present colleagues from the OTF Group. Essays explore the personal transformations undergone by development professionals in some of the world's most difficult environments, and the lessons they learned along the way.The introduction of The Poor Are Awake will be written by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, and author of the best selling, The Purpose Driven Life. Outside commentaries from His Excellency, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda; Ashraf Ghani, former Minister of Finance in Afghanistan; Luis-Alberto Moreno, President of the InterAmerican Development Bank; and Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank.
Disclaimer: The SEVEN Fund reserves the right not to move ahead with competitions listed above, or to substitute other programs in their place, at its sole and absolute discretion.
Entrepreneurs create products, services and jobs. They expand economies, improve people's lives, provide employment (high and rising wages) and bring about competition. A competitive environment, in turn, gives rise to efficiency, meritocracy and further innovations and entrepreneurial drive.
The potent combination of entrepreneurship and technological innovation can forge an environment that is conducive to further enterprise, involving even government policy in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.