Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary

STORIES OF CHANGE Objective:

The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and the Skoll Foundation have partnered in a three-year initiative to explore how independent feature-length documentary film can advance knowledge about social entrepreneurship.

The Stories of Change Fund will consider independent feature-length documentary projects in all categories of development, production and post-production. Completed films are note eligible. Film projects must be completed by 2010. Grant awards will be made on a case-by-case basis and may range up to $150,000 US per film.

This is a one-time only RFP.

Grants will be awarded based on the following criteria:

• All films must highlight and /or include a contemporary social entrepreneur, their organization and a focus on the issues in which the entrepreneurs are seeking a systemic and positive change.
• All films must be feature length (over 65 minutes).
• All films must be independently produced, with creative control held by the producing/directing team.
• Films must display directorial vision/aesthetic and have the potential for theatrical release.

Sundance Documentary Film Program is part of the non-profit Sundance Institute. Dedicated to the discovery and support of artists, grants will be awarded to independent documentary film projects selected from the applicants. Sundance Institute reserves the right to solicit proposals. Please note that Sundance Institute seeks no licensing rights in the documentary film projects we support. Details of the contract will be presented to projects that are finalists.

This will be a competitive fund please make sure the project is appropriate to the guidelines. Questions can be directed to dfpskoll@sundance.org.

The submission period is open from June 15, 2008 until the deadline of Friday, August 15, 2008. If you think your film meets the above criteria, please continue the online application below.

Filmmakers will be notified no later than December 1st if their submission has reached the final selection.

Learn more.

Read the FAQ.

Apply now.

• Discuss a paper that positions Social Enterprise in a wider context
• Define Social Enterprise: what it is and what it is not!
• Contribute your own examples of successful Social Enterprises
• Consider The SEEP Network’s future role in the Social Enterprise field

CALLING ISRAEL'S NEW LEADERS!

CALLING ALL SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS!

NIS 214,000 Fellowship and Mentoring!

Do you have an idea that can change Israeli society? Do you need assistance and professional guidance in order to realize your dream?

Are you a Social Entrepreneur with a practical vision and deep commitment to positive social change who has great leadership and entrepreneurial abilities?

We will provide you with assistance and professional guidance and help you turn your vision into reality through the Social Entrepreneur (SE) Fellowship Program – a joint venture of the Israel Venture Network (IVN) and the New Israel Fund (NIF).  

Fellowship includes:

    * A monthly stipend of up to NIS 7,500 for the entrepreneur which allows him/her to devote full time to developing and growing the initiative.
    * Mentoring by leading business men & women who are members of the IVN network.
    * Training in relevant fields to the initiative by Shatil, the NIF training and empowerment center for social change organizations.
    * Opportunity for exposure and professional networking

For important information on the application process including the criteria for applying and the online application form, please go to:
www.ivn.org.il  under 'Social Entrepreneur Fellowship Program'.

The application deadline for this year is midnight July 31st, 2008.  Applications will not be accepted after this date.
The winning Fellows will be announced online.

The FRONTLINE/World Social Entrepreneurs Film Program is a grant opportunity, open to public and academic libraries, that supports a screening and discussion of a series of short documentary films on social entrepreneurs around the world. The library program seeks to connect communities to the concept of social entrepreneurship and to promote dialogue on a local level. Funding for the library program is provided through a grant from the PBS Foundation and the Skoll Foundation.

FRONTLINE/World is the award-winning PBS international news magazine that turns its lens on the global community, covering countries and cultures rarely seen on American television. Our special Social Entrepreneurs Series home page features the stories of people whose ideas and organizations create new and sustainable markets and services that benefit underserved communities everywhere in the developing world. Entrepreneurs change the face of business; social entrepreneurs change society by creating solutions to social problems that leap beyond charity and encourage the development of systematic solutions that help eradicate poverty, enhance educational opportunities, provide better health care and champion social justice. Thirteen short programs are available to view in full online, and three new programs will air in May and June 2008.

Grant Opportunity Summary:
Forty (40) public and academic libraries will receive grants of $500 each and support materials from the FRONTLINE/World Social Entrepreneurs Film Program. Libraries will hold a FRONTLINE/World Social Entrepreneurs film viewing and discussion program, and at least one related program (panel, lecture, forum or other format) on the topic of social entrepreneurship in partnership with a local or regional community organization.

The goal of the FRONTLINE/World Social Entrepreneurs Film Program is to engage the general public, students and professionals in a discussion with leaders in business, humanitarian aid, academia and/or social activism on the concept of social entrepreneurship as a way to create meaningful solutions to social problems in developing countries, in contemporary society and in our local communities.

How to Apply:
Review the guidelines and complete the application on the following pages. E-mail application to libraries@flworld.org.

Application Deadline: August 1, 2008 (receipt deadline)

Libraries will receive an e-mail confirming receipt of their application. Libraries will be notified if their applications are accepted or not by August 10, 2008.

Are you passionate about making the world a better place? Have an idea about how to make your fellow students and your school more socially responsible? Want to turn that idea into a reality?

Conscious Lifestyle is accepting applications for its venture program.

Applicants must be full-time students at a high school or university in the U.S. or Canada.

Submit an application for the chance to win:

• Up to $1,000 in start-up funding
• Web space on consciouslifestyle.org
• Monthly skill-building workshops
• Mentoring from a high-performing professional
• Access to a network of social entrepreneurs

To learn more, make sure to check out our FAQs and Selection Criteria.

To apply, download the documents below and email your action plan to mike@consciouslifestyle.org.

Application Deadline: August 1, 2008.

 

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards has an amazing prize package available to the student entrepreneurs who can impress the judges and win the competition!  The total prize package for the 2008 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards is estimated at over $100,000 in cash and business products and services donated by Entrepreneurs’ Organization members.

Undergraduate students from the United States of America and from countries other than the three listed below please click this link to nominate:  CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE FOR THE 2008 GLOBAL STUDENT ENTREPRENEUR AWARDS!

Regional Competitions in Canada, Sweden, and Puerto Rico are hosted by Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Partners

Note: Although the global deadline for nominations is 31 August 2008, we highly encourage that you submit your nomination as soon as possible as regional competitions begin in Spring 2008.

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards welcomes nominees from any country around the globe.  In locations where we do not have a regional program established, nominees will be judged virtually by a panel of entrepreneurs.

The deadline for nominations globally is 31 August 2008!

1. First - review the criteria at http://www.gsea.org/awards/who-is-eligible/ to ensure that the person you are nominating qualifies to compete for the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.
2. Once you’ve reviewed the criteria and you’re sure the student entrepreneur is eligible to compete, head over to http://www.gsea.org/nominate/ to complete the nomination form.
3. Once we’ve received the nomination form, we will contact the student entrepreneur nominated to continue with the process.  To see the process involved, please refer to http://www.gsea.org/awards/how-the-gsea-works/.

Please contact Global Student Entrepreneur Awards at info@gsea.org or +1.250.391.6035 with any questions regarding nomination or the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards competition.

The search for America's top social entrepreneurs is on! The Social Venture Network (SVN) Innovation Awards program supports the "next generation" of socially responsible business and nonprofit leaders by providing them access to the people and resources to help develop their ideas into successful enterprises. Now through July 15, 2008 companies can submit applications at www.svn.org/awards.

SVN is a member organization with nearly 500 CEO's, investors, and nonprofit leaders who are running the country's most cutting-edge socially responsible businesses and nonprofits. Since 1987, SVN has inspired a community of leading business and social entrepreneurs by nurturing the growth and prevalence of socially responsible investing, sustainable economies, fair trade and organic/eco living.

Eye-to-I ( www.eye-to-I.org)  is organising intercultural meetings trying to build bridges between social entrepreneurs from "the West" and from the Middle East.


festival.forum is a conference happening in Switzerland in the end of July 08. The focus will be on the young human being, as well as questions and topics he brings with him. What makes us work for a sustainable world? What thoughts arise during this work? What are themes, ideals, paradigms that are relevant in our time?  festival.forum aims to showcase the youth forces, the so-called youth impulse, that young people bring into this world.  Register now.


International Youth Initiative Program (YIP) is a new social entrepreneur training in Järna, Sweden, for youth aged 18 to 25 who want to create a positive social change in the world. A course in how to bring your own initiative into being. The first term will start in August´08.  Apply by 31 July 2008.

The Skoll Foundation announces that August 5, 2008 is the next deadline for receipt of applications for the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship.

As always, we are looking for social entrepreneurs whose work has the potential for large-scale positive change in the areas of tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity. 

Within these issues, we are particularly interested in applications from social entrepreneurs working in five critical sub-issue areas that threaten the survival of humanity – climate change, nuclear proliferation, global pandemics, conflict in the Middle East and water scarcity.

Award winners are celebrated at the annual Skoll World Forum following their selection, at the end of March in Oxford, England.
 
You can read the Award Guidelines, take our eligibility quiz and fill out an application on our Web site.
 
Future deadlines will be posted to the Skoll Foundation website as they become available.

A special Rockwood Art of Leadership training for Social Entrepreneurs and Socially Responsible Business Leaders will be held September 8-11, 2008 in Sonoma, CA.  Rockwood Leadership Institute is launching this new program for social entrepreneurs and socially responsible business leaders. Designed to provide a high-intensity learning community for senior executives of socially responsible businesses, it is also open to non-profit leaders with a social venture focus.

The Art of Leadership for Social Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders will convene a select community of powerful and collaborative social change professionals and business leaders to refine leadership skills, strengthen and sustain compelling visions for your organization, deal more effectively with organizational challenges, and spark new partnerships.

Download Brochure

Since 2000, Rockwood Leadership Institute's Art of Leadership has helped more than 2000 social change leaders refine their leadership skills, strengthen and sustain compelling visions for their organizations, and spark new partnerships. Hundreds of our alumni consider themselves social entrepreneurs, and consider their Rockwood training a turning point in achieving their goals.

"Rockwood's training helped me make Greenpeace's Solar Energy Campaign a success. Now the lessons I learned in the Art of Leadership are helping me run a solar energy company. Leading a business as a social enterprise poses a unique set of leadership challenges, for which Rockwood's trainings are the best in the business."
Danny Kennedy
President, Sungevity

For more information visit the website or contact Michael Sowle at Mike@rockwoodleadership.org.

Following the Festivals of Ideas, we have challenged third sector innovators to act on the advice and intelligence they have received, connect and collaborate with the contacts they made and continue to develop their work.  The next key milestone in the Innovation Exchange process is 31st July, which is the last day on which people can submit expressions for interest in our Next Practice programme, which includes access to the NESTA Innovation Exchange Fund.

The Innovation Exchange Fund and Next Practice programme is our chance to work with the very best of third sector innovation in relation to independent living and excluded young people.  We aim to help third sector innovators to develop, evaluate and grow their work.  We will do this by offering a combination of in-kind support and funding.  Funding awards will vary between £10k and £40k.  In-kind support will involve some generic elements – coaching support and a small number of events – and bespoke support, designed around projects’ particular characteristics.

We will publish final details of the application form on Friday, 13^th June, based on your feedback and comments on the criteria and selection process.  However, we do not intend to alter the fundamental focus of the Fund or the Next Practice programme.  As a result, the draft criteria and application form here will provide a very useful sense of what we are looking for and what expressions of interest will need to contain.

Click here for the draft of the document providing information about the fund.

 Click here for the draft of the application form (Final version to be posted June 13, 2008) for the Next Practice programme, which will need to be submitted by 5pm on 31st July.

To give a sense of the kinds of projects under discussion at the recent Festivals of Ideas and to give a sense of the kinds of projects that might feature under the Next Practice programme, we have put together a set of opportunity areas for both independent living and excluded young people, based on work so far.  Crucially, while these may inform expressions of interest, they are absolutely not intended to limit the kinds of project supported under this programme.  The themes are merely indicative and they are explicitly intended to be pulled apart and second-guessed.

Social Venture Network (SVN), the country's leading network of socially responsible entrepreneurs, announced today that it is now accepting applications for the 2nd Annual SVN Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards program supports the 'next generation' of socially responsible business and nonprofit leaders by providing them access to the people and resources to help develop their ideas into successful enterprises.

HELP CHANGE THE WORLD

PICTURE TV based in Clerkenwell, London are looking for FIVE EXTRAORDINARY ACTORS from all over the world, aged between 18 and 30 to make a ground breaking feature film on the state of the economy and its effects on our planet. The project will involve traveling to Africa and Asia, and you will be expected to write a blog and at times self shoot video for the project. It's a ground breaking idea that will catapult you into the public eye, but will also take up much of your time over the next two years.

It is therefore ESSENTIAL that you apply to this opportunity ONLY if you are committed to making a difference in this world.

We are expecting to take our time over this casting process, as we are committed to finding the right people to front our film. This is a film and does require acting, however we are more interested in your passion for activism than acting experience.

Please send us a -ONE MINUTE VIDEO DIARY- telling us who you are, and your thoughts on our society's effects on the planet AND 100 words describing yourself, your experience and a contact email. Do not send CV's or any other information, as we are already stretched thin in our research of this important subject.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to apply for this, we are very excited by this project and look forward to meeting you very soon.

All video should be less than 10mb and sent to casting at: Picture Television

The Mind Trust’s Education Entrepreneur Fellowship is a nationally unique incubator for transformative education ventures. The Fellowship offers promising education entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop and launch their break-the-mold education ventures and the support necessary for success. Fellows receive two years of salary, benefits, coaching, customized training, a travel budget and more. With this support, fellows will be able to realize their visions and achieve extraordinary results for some of the nation’s most underserved students.
Fellowship ventures target underserved or disadvantaged populations with solutions that attack the root problems in the delivery of public education. The Fellowship is for people who envision entirely new approaches to the challenges of public education, and possess the relentless drive necessary to exploit opportunities to fulfill their visions. Fellows join a growing network of education entrepreneurs dedicated to forging dramatic change in public education.

The Mind Trust plans to select three highly capable people to join the second cohort of fellows. It is expected that the second cohort of fellows will be selected in early December 2008. Each fellow works with The Mind Trust staff to establish an appropriate start date.
Fellows are full-time employees of The Mind Trust throughout the Fellowship. Fellows receive a $90,000 annual salary during the Fellowship and a full benefits package that includes medical, dental, and retirement benefits. In addition, fellows receive stipends of $5,000 per year ($10,000 over two years) for travel and $5,000 per year ($10,000 over two years) for professional development. The Fellowship is a full-time responsibility; fellows should not have additional employment, consulting contracts, or other professional responsibilities. Fellows may live anywhere in the United States during the Fellowship, but will be required to participate in meetings with their cohort of fellows in Indianapolis at least quarterly. In addition, Fellows must include Indianapolis as part of their initial growth plans.

Important Dates and Application Information
The Mind Trust is now accepting Statements of Intent online through September 5, 2008. Select applicants will be invited to submit Full Applications. Full applications are due on October 17, 2008. Statements of Intent and Full Applications are accepted only via The Mind Trust’s online application form. Visit www.themindtrust.org for the application form and more information on the Education Entrepreneur Fellowship. Fellowships for the second cohort will be awarded by December 1, 2008.

About The Mind Trust
The Mind Trust is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to dramatically improve public education for underserved students by empowering education entrepreneurs to develop or expand transformative education initiatives. To achieve its mission, The Mind Trust has two principal strategies: (1) a nationally unique Education Entrepreneur Fellowship that serves as an incubator for transformative education ventures; and (2) a Venture Fund to recruit to Indianapolis the nation’s most successful entrepreneurial education initiatives.

Call for papers:  GIVING, International Journal on Philanthropy and Social Innovation invites submissions for publication in its upcoming thematic issue on Social Entrepreneurship (December 2008).
 
The Journal, published - twice a year - in English and Italian, is an interdisciplinary forum, focused on t