Please join a friend of our organization, Elizabeth Scharpf, Founder and Chief Instigator of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), as she talks about the education programs and local businesses she and her colleagues are helping women start-up in East Africa to ensure that girls and women have access to opportunities for productive lives. Nick Kristof recently recognized SHE in The New York Times as one of the world's most unique and meaningful organizations bridging business and traditional charity.
SHE is a social venture using market-based approaches to address social problems in developing countries. Its first initiative, she28, is addressing girls' and women's lack of access to affordable sanitary pads when they menstruate causing them to miss school and/or work--up to 50 days per year. she28 helps women start their own businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable, eco-friendly sanitary pads by sourcing local, inexpensive, raw materials (e.g., banana fibers), establishing manufacturing systems, and leveraging existing distribution networks. Echoing Green, one of the premier, seed funders of social enterprises, named SHE one of the 20 most innovative social ventures worldwide (out of 1,500 applicants). Harvard Business School named SHE founder, Elizabeth Scharpf, its first Social Enterprise Fellow. President Clinton recognized SHE for its accomplishments at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Where: Architecture for Humanity - Potluck Lunch (bring something to share)
When: 12-1pm on March 3, 2010
Why: Because it matters and you will find this so interesting to know about from an entrepreneurial point of view, as well as public health, and economic development for women.
