Click here for photo gallery - Courtesy Orphee Doussou

ForSE 2010: Forum for Social Entrepreneurs held its fourth annual conference on social entrepreneurship at Northeastern university hosted by TIE Boston’s Social Entrepreneurs Group and Northeastern’s Social Enterprise Institute and NetImpact Undergrad programs The lineup of speakers and keynoters highlighted the entrepreneurial energy in this sector as over 200 attendees crowded the West Village venue at Northeastern on Saturday, October 30th.

The highlight of the morning session was an inspirational keynote by Prof. Kasturi (Kash) Rangan who spoke eloquently about the role of social entrepreneurship globally. With examples of successful social enterprises like Aravind Eye Institute, Sulabh and Jay Kimmelman’s School in a Box, he highlighted the need to have a social impact while also maintaining a focus on building a sustainable and scalable business. For example the Aravind Eye institute was able to implement the best business processes to drive down costs to 1/100 th of that in the West while still maintaining 50% margins.  Vanita Shastri, Executive Director of TIE Boston welcomed the attendees and also invited Prof Rangan to formally release the TIE Boston book “Social Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability in Business“ that was compiled by Vanita Shastri and Prof. Preeta Banerjee of Brandies from the various social impact efforts of the TIE members. Northeastern’s President Aoun also welcomed the attendees and charged them with addressing the educational needs of society.

The panel sessions were setup in four tracks – Health, Technology, Education and Sustainability. The panels provided a great cross section of experiences from real world practitioners who shared their learnings with the aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience. A who’s who lineup of speakers included

• Vitor Pampalona representing NETRA and Prof. Ramesh Raskar, whose low-cost, cell-phone based, optometry solution was written up by  Xconomy.com as, â€œCamera Culture: Ramesh Raskar, perhaps the Doc Edgerton of the future … ”
• Winners of $50,000 Social Impact prize in the MassChallenge competition, Seeding Labs’ Nina Dudnik and David Qualter shared their innovative ideas. Seeding Labs CEO Nina Dudnik was also chosen as a 2010 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow and presented at the recent PopTech in Maine.
• Another winner of $50,000 Social Impact prize in the MassChallenge competition, Pearl’s Premium’s Jackson Madnick presented his persistence in developing a combination of naturally occurring grass seeds that substantially reduces water usage for lawns.
• Pradip Sarmah, Ashoka Fellow and Founder of Rickshaw Bank, an NGO that provides micro-finance to Indian rickshaw drivers, was visiting from India and also participated on a panel on “Innovative Business Models providing Financial Services to the Poor“
• The Health panels had several  renowned speakers including Jose Gomez-Marquez, who was named by Smart Planet as “master of invention” in their news piece about his many inventive creations and Jeffrey Blander who was named as the 2010 Olympus Emerging Educational Leader
• Dr. Una Ryan and Sam White speakers in the Health and Technology tracks were recently named as Boston’s Top 15 Innovators by the Boston Globe.
• Leading educationists  - Prof Fernando Reimers (Harvard Univ) , Michael Danziger, Founder Stepping Stone foundation, Josh Biber, Founder, Teach for America (Boston Chapter)  and Beth Anderson , Founder Phoenix charter academy
  

• Soren Harrison who presented his idea “Sol Solution” to install solar solutions in low income public schools to reduce their energy costs and won the First Prize.
• James Molini whose idea of recycling electronic waste to provide energy solutions for the developing world won his company, Waste2Watts, the Second Prize
• Andreea Zugravu pitch to setup Afghanistan’s first e-commerce website, Afghan Trade Mark, got her the Third Prize.

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