December 2020 Social Impact Roundup: Sustaining the Change

December was a time to look back and reflect on the year that truly changed everything, and January is the time to do something about it and #BuildBackBetter. We shared a reflection on how our team and global community have leveraged the crisis to build back better, and our partners at Village Capital shared a ten year impact report with a window into how it has grown from supporting 1,000 entrepreneurs to 100,000. 

We also looked back at our most popular blog posts from 2020 that are still relevant today as we continue building back better in 2021. Our friends at NextBillion are doing the same through its annual “Top Article of the Year” contest, which you can participate in by casting your vote here. 

The threshold of a New Year also gave us the opportunity to look ahead at ways to sustain the change in 2021. S-GRID participant Vista Caballo partnered with Leaf Better Companies to track its sustainability metrics and committed to mitigating climate change and its personal carbon footprint. Proof of Impact Co-Founder Fleur Heyns also shared a meaningful reflection about how to make progress in the world by thinking big and starting small. 

Find opportunities to support the social enterprise movement in sustaining the change to build back better in 2021 with the social impact job opportunities and upcoming events below:

Social impact job opportunities

• Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is hiring for an East Africa Regional Director as well as an East Africa Program Associate
• Sistema.bio is hiring for the following positions, ordered by application deadline:
  • January 6th: Contador General based in Mexico City
  • January 6th: Salesforce Systems analyst, remote location
  • January 12th: Chief Growth Officer, remote location
  • January 19th: Latam Director based in Mexico City 
• The Mulago Foundation is hiring for an Investment Principal based out of San Francisco

Upcoming events & new programs

• January 18th: Atlas Corps is accepting applications through January 18th for its new Virtual Leadership Initiative launching in March 2021. Participants, known as Atlas Corps Scholars, enhance their professional skills, build their global networks, and prepare for leadership in their home communities in weekly live and asynchronous sessions. 
• January 31st: The MovingWorlds Institute Global Fellowship helps professionals navigate big decisions by providing the insights, tools, experience, and network needed to make a bigger impact with your career. Apply by January 31st to be considered for our cohort launching in February 2021! 
• Our Sustainable Growth of Revenues for International Development (S-GRID) program is accepting applications for social enterprises looking to grow partnerships with the corporate sector. Learn more and apply here.

Congratulations to…

• BEMPU Health and its life-saving neonatal ApneBoot for being selected by the Maharashtra State Innovation Society to work with the Government of Maharashtra to implement the device in regions with a high burden of premature births and neonatal mortality.
• Neighborhood Development Center for being awarded $1 million by the Hardenbergh Foundation to further its work assisting entrepreneurs and businesses recover, rebuild, and overcome hardships caused by the pandemic and civil unrest.
• Microfinance leader Kiva for being awarded the World Bank’s 2020 Mission Billion Competition Global Prize for its innovative work driving financial inclusion in Sierra Leone
• Baltimore Community Lending for being selected by Bank of America’s Neighborhood Builders program to receive $200,000 in flexible funding, a year of leadership training for the executive director and an emerging leader at the organization
• Global Fellow Lucy Oduor for being selected by Shortlist Professionals out of more than 980 applicants as part of the Kenya Small Business Leaders Program!

A final bit of inspiration 

Subscribe here to be the first to received next month’s updated. In the meantime, we leave you with this parting thought…

“Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” – Arundhati Roy