Featured Projects

Martus

Technology tools for grassroots social justice organizations

North America > United States > Palo Alto

The Elimination of Poverty Project

Full time employment facilities for rural destitute women through Seri-cultural activities.

Asia and Oceania > Bangladesh > Natore

Northern Ireland Community Advocacy Mentor Program

Helping women get elected, lobby, and shape public policy

Europe >United Kingdom> Belfast

Martus project leader Jim Fruchterman selected by Schwab Foundation as one of world's top social entrepreneurs

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has announced the annual selection of its top Social Entrepreneurs of the Year for 2003.  Jim Fruchterman, President and CEO of The Benetech Initiative, has been selected as one of this year's outstanding individuals.  The other US winners were Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, and Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America .

Social entrepreneurs identify practical solutions to social problems by combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity. Deeply committed to generating social value, these entrepreneurs identify new processes, services, products or unique ways of combining proven practice with innovation, driving through pattern-breaking approaches to seemingly intractable social issues. Most importantly, they act as social alchemists, converting under-utilized resources into productive assets by working with, and motivating, groups of people and communities.

INFORMATION ON FRUCHTERMAN:

Jim Fruchterman, President, CEO and founder of The Benetech Initiative, is one of the twenty outstanding social entrepreneurs selected by the Schwab Foundation.  Benetech is an innovative Silicon Valley nonprofit founded by Fruchterman in 2000 that develops technology projects addressing major social problems in areas such as disability, human rights, literacy, education and the digital divide.  Its first two projects are Bookshare.org, an online library that offers accessible digital books to people in the US who are blind or have significant reading disabilities, and the Martus Human Rights Bulletin System, a new technology tool to assist grassroots human rights workers worldwide to collect, safeguard and disseminate human rights violation information.

Fruchterman founded Benetech�s predecessor organization, Arkenstone, in 1989 to provide reading tools for people with disabilities.  For over a decade, Arkenstone helped over 35,000 individuals in 60 countries to live and work independently.  The sale of the Arkenstone business operations in 2000 to a for-profit company provided the initial capital to launch Benetech.

�I am honored to have been selected by the Schwab Foundation,� Fruchterman said.  �This recognition is a tremendous success for Benetech and a validation of our mission of using technology to help disadvantaged people and communities.  I look forward to working with the support of the Schwab Foundation and the other Schwab Social Entrepreneurs to spread this message worldwide in the coming year.�

In 1982, Fruchterman co-founded Calera Recognition Systems, which developed character recognition that would allow computers to read virtually all printed text.  He is also a cofounder, director and the chief financial officer for RAF Technology, Inc., America 's leading high-end OCR technology company, used by the United States Postal Service to route the mail.  In addition, he is a member of the board of the National Gathering of Social Entrepreneurs, has served on two federal advisory committees and has been awarded the Access Award by the American Federation for the Blind (1996) and the Robert S. Bray Award from the American Council of the Blind (2002).  Fruchterman holds a B.S. in Engineering and a M.S. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.

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Global Poverty:  Much remains to be done--but some programs have made remarkable gains 

Pete Engardio | Oct 14, 2002

Seventeen years ago, Rhoda Kabogaza and her family fled in terror from their home in Uganda's Luwero Triangle, hiding out in the bush 10 miles away. The region was engulfed in a long, bloody civil war. Kabogaza's 20-year-old son was executed as a suspected rebel. Her six other children had no access to education or health care. Today, Kabogaza owns a bustling business, has put her two eldest children through high school, and supports two children whose mother died from AIDS. 

In the wake of devastating floods, strife-torn Bangladesh drew world attention in the 1970s as millions faced starvation. Like most of their illiterate neighbors in the village of Bharariya , which had no school or health clinic, Noor Jahan Begum and her family were landless. They barely fed themselves toiling on the farms of a wealthy landowner. Today, Bharariya has all the basic services and 80 small private businesses. Noor grows two tons of rice every year on her farm and hopes to save enough money to send her daughter to college and build a house.

 To be sure, these are just two uplifting stories plucked out of an ocean of desperate poverty. But they illustrate a powerful trend. Each year, millions of people are climbing out of destitution, helped in part by smart aid projects aimed at stimulating development at the grassroots level. Both Rhoda Kabogaza and Noor Jahan Begum, for example, turned their lives around with the help of microcredit agencies, a rapidly growing movement that has enabled some 2 million poor families in dozens of nations to start and expand small businesses.

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1. Why use DevelopmentSpace?

For donors:

• Transparency that lets you know exactly where your money is going.  You have access to every project's business plan, so you can investigate the financial planning and the social returns before you contribute to the project
• A Direct Connection so that you can directly involved, if you choose to be.  You can discuss the finer points of the entrepreneur's project idea.  You can see pictures of the project underway.  You have the ability to rate the entrepreneur on his/her job, so that future donors will be conscious of their reputation.  
• A larger selection in our marketplace allows you to find the perfect project.  Whether your looking for something in a specific sector or a specific country, you'll be able to browse for something you like on DevelopmentSpace.  
• The value is unmatched.  Simply put, DevelopmentSpace is the low-overhead, high-quality option for international giving.  

For project leaders:

�         U.S. 501c(3) status for all projects posted on DevelopmentSpace.com, making American donors eligible for a tax deduction.

�         Project planning templates and advisory services that allow project leaders to create thorough and thoughtful project proposals. 

�         A specific web address for each project posted on DevelopmentSpace, where project leaders can upload supporting documents, photos, and multimedia.

�         Reputation mechanisms that make it easier for those with an entrepreneurial background to get funding. 

�         It's free

2. Where do the projects come from? 

Any individual or organization in the world can submit a project on DevelopmentSpace.  This approach empowers the people closest to the problem to create a bottom-up strategy for economic and social growth. 

Once the project idea is posted, the project leader must be authenticated (vouched for by an internationally recognized NGO) before he/she moves any further along the business planning process.  

This unique process has yielded a wide spectrum of social entrepreneurs on the site:  from a leader of a prominent NGO to a group of Indian businessmen to a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana.    

3. How do I get people to support my project?

As a social entrepreneur, you worked hard to create a great business plan.  You uploaded pictures, came up with a clever project title, and even submitted an itemized financial statement. 

So where's the funding?  

Often times, it just takes some aggressive marketing on your part.  If you project is in make a deal stage, you have to let people know about it. 

Use the tell a friend feature on DevelopmentSpace to let your friends and colleagues know about your project. 

Look for endorsements - let potential donors know what other people think about your plan. 

Track your deal sheet.  If someone downloads information about your project, contact them and thank them for their interest.  Ask them if there are any further questions you can answer for them. 

Be a salesman.  If you're not enthusiastic about the project, no one else will be. 

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