SIX Blog - Opinion

Let us end the separation :( providing finance for social and... Activities)

It’s better and essential every person or group see results of its own activities in Society. Problem arises when different wrong processes separate between money and the mother.
So, as it s clear we should join between them again, one natural way it can happen is by taxes. So, Government in a process will estimate and pay a portion of your direct or indirect result to you as NGO or what so ever.
The other way is to increase the limitations of intellectual property law to include such cases.
For example: you as NGO (university…) have generated an idea (Open University, Google...) or a service and this service sooner or later will show itself in different ways (producing money or lessening expenses) in society
So, naturally you are the entity who should be entitled to use the result.
This will answer important part of the problem.
After implementing such method other part (some activities may underestimated or by any reason do not like to use this system) will have access to more generous people.
davood011@yahoo.com

We held our second ever Social Innovation Camp last weekend and it was a whole lot of fun.

From a Friday evening to Sunday afternoon we had over 80 talented developers, designers, social needs experts, mentors, facilitators and those with business, marketing and legal skills to help accelerate seven early-stage ideas for web-based tools to change the world.

We set them the challenge of building seven social start-ups in less than 48 hours and let them loose in the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green, London.

The whole thing kicked off on Friday evening with an informal introduction and drinks: together with some imaginative use of felt-tip pens and sticky labels.
 The real work began bright and – given the night before -perhaps a little too early at 9am on Saturday morning. We had strong coffee and huge croissants to welcome Campers and after a brief introduction to set the challenges for the weekend, they were off dividing themselves into teams around the seven ideas and hunkering down into spaces around the building.

And it all sort of took off from there. Each team had to ‘prove the potential’ their idea had to create real social change and become a fully-fledged social start-up by 2pm on Sunday afternoon. We gave them some things to think about (hacking together some software, deciding how they’d sustain the tool and how they’d get people to use it) but how and what they chose to develop was left to participants to decide.

Everyone attacked their task in a huge variety of ways: we had a crack team of coders sitting in the attic building this; to groups fiercely arguing about taxonomies; to neat divisions of labour into development, design and pitch. We used Twitter to find skills and expertise around the building and had a dedicated handful of people circulating each of the projects offering help and advice on everything from media law to project branding.

Patch leads and extension cords tangled round each other, mixed up amongst pens, paper, glue and cellotape - all put to use showing how ideas could make a difference in reality. One team even headed off to a nearby canal path to ambush Saturday afternoon joggers into signing up to their site. Projects gained new names, the walls became plastered in post-it notes, diagrams, wireframe sketches and designs.
After a frenzied sprint to the finish, all our participants gathered in the Museum of Childhood at 2pm on Sunday to share what they’d built over the weekend. We invited a whole load of extras along and each of the seven teams pitched what they’d created.

The progress teams of people – most of whom had never met previously – made in less than 48 hours was staggering. The projects kicked off with AccessCity, who built a stunning amount in one weekend - a Ruby on Rails platform with working api and iPhone app as well as a beautifully designed site and presentation. The audience was then treated to two hours of video, clever tech and the appearance of some vegetables at the end. Check out our December ideas page for all the material we’ve collected from the weekend – the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss also wrote a great run down of the teams and projects here.

The judges had the unenviable task of rating each project from one to seven based on some loose criteria: that a project had proved its potential to create real social change by harnessing the power of individuals to do something for themselves and that the technology they’d built wasn’t just for early-adopters, but for anyone to use.

The results were very, very close – the Good Gym scraped in in first place with Useful Visitors a close second, followed by our other five projects in very close succession. You can read more about the judges’ view from Lee Bryant at Headshift.

This was the focus of discussion with politicians, young people, front line community workers, entrepreneurs, business people and many more at the Chain Reaction event this week. The event was organised by Community Links and launched Global Entrepreneurship Week. You can learn more about this two day event here. Unlike many events, Chain Reaction's focus is on it legacy. What happens now? Will people continue to connect, collaborate and commit? Check out new ideas for positive social change that came oout of the day so far.

We believe SIX is full of people with great ideas, experiences, methods and projects and we need your help!

Anton Shelupanov, our thinker in Residence for Crime, Justice and Youth is organising a seminar on the policing of young adults - aged between 18 and 25 – as part of a programme to pilot promising ideas. He is interested in any innovative approaches to this issue and any interesting case studies, projects or ideas you might have about this!  

 Join his Forum here - http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1200 

 Yvonne Roberts - a senior associate with the health launchpad team at the Young Foundation is speaking at the WHO 2008 Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health. This is a rare opportunity to talk about social innovation to ministers from all over the world.  We’d be very grateful for examples of social innovations in health in the developing world, and particular messages that are worth communicating.

Join her Forum here - http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1201 

We’ve just launched the first paper on the Methods for Social Innovation project -  Generating Social Innovation: setting an agenda, shaping methods and growing the field.  This includes nearly 300 methods currently in use around the world. Please read it here -http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/node/1167 and let us know what you think, including additions and amendments!

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The second part (concept design) of Chita 08 workshop has launched on 2nd of September and last 2 weeks until 13rd when there would be stage presentation.
5 PhD researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Miaosen Gong, Francesca Valsecchi, Joon Sang Baek, Musstanser Tinauli, Irina Maria Suteu visited Jiangnan University and work together with 29 Chinese students and lecturers.

During the 2 weeks concept design part, 13 input lectures including 6 public lectures have been done from different perspectives. The concept design part includes field research, idea generation and concept definition. 6 groups of students developed 6 service design concepts about food network, mobility, health, stories connected places, migrant workers and outdoor sports. And the concept design presentation was organized in the morning of 13rd to share the results with other professors, students and local partners. The experiences during this 2 weeks are exciting and beyond of our expectation.

The next steps of workshop are solutions development and exhibition in Expo in November, together with results of Lab sythesis project that we have done in Polimi last year.

Chita08 involves 6 Phd Candidates in DIeCM from different research lines and theirs research activities (directly involved into 3 Phd thesis) from different perspectives. We can say it’s discovering of Phd research based action. Based on related research activities, 6 academic publications have been published or accepted by the design conferences all over the world (Torino, China, Hongkong, Scotland).

For more information, please see: http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The second part (concept design) of Chita 08 workshop has launched on 2nd of September and last 2 weeks until 13rd when there would be stage presentation.
5 PhD researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Miaosen Gong, Francesca Valsecchi, Joon Sang Baek, Musstanser Tinauli, Irina Maria Suteu visited Jiangnan University and work together with 29 Chinese students and lecturers.

During the 2 weeks concept design part, 13 input lectures including 6 public lectures have been done from different perspectives. The concept design part includes field research, idea generation and concept definition. 6 groups of students developed 6 service design concepts about food network, mobility, health, stories connected places, migrant workers and outdoor sports. And the concept design presentation was organized in the morning of 13rd to share the results with other professors, students and local partners. The experiences during this 2 weeks are exciting and beyond of our expectation.

The next steps of workshop are solutions development and exhibition in Expo in November, together with results of Lab sythesis project that we have done in Polimi last year.

Chita08 involves 6 Phd Candidates in DIeCM from different research lines and theirs research activities (directly involved into 3 Phd thesis) from different perspectives. We can say it’s discovering of Phd research based action. Based on related research activities, 6 academic publications have been published or accepted by the design conferences all over the world (Torino, China, Hongkong, Scotland).

For more information, please see: http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

Chita 08 is a collaboration workshop between Indaco department, Politecnico di milano (Italy) and School of Design, Jiangnan University (China). It’s a service design exercise as a teaching activity, and as a research activity, to investigate potentials of mobile communication technologies in supporting the collaborative services which are implicated in grassroots social innovation towards sustainable everyday life.

The workshop has been launched in July 1st and would last 5 months to proceed a complete project of service design till November 11th during the Wuxi International Industrial design Expo where the results of workshop will be presented and exhibited finally. During the first two weeks September, 5 Ph.D Candidate and researcher in Indaco (Polimi) will visit Jiangnan University as lecturers of workshop.

Chita 08 workshop is a great opportunity to exchange the teaching and researching experiences in service design and design for sustainability between two universities and will be a real step of design action towards sustainable society.

We are still looking for the suitable local partners for workshop as follows:
- Companies in the field of mobile communication technologies, who are supposed to be the clients of design projects and to provide the technological supports;
- Non Government Organizations(NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other Associations, who also could be clients of service design project and provide the local context;

For more information http://www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

If any partners have interests, pls contact to:
Miaosen Gong
Dis-Indaco, Politecnico di Milano
Via Durando 38/A, 20158 Milano, Italy
Tel:+39 02 2399 5967
Cellphone:+39 3339425646
Fax: +39 02 2399 7274
miaosen.gong@gmail.com (miaosen.gong(a)gmail.com)
www.sustainable-everyday.net
www.chita.politecalab.org/chita/

At the risk of being a "Blog Hog", I thought this second post I put on the Australia 2020 Summit participants' website might also be of interest to SIX members:

If you haven't already done so, please try to watch the powerful, confronting documentary film "The Oasis", screened on the ABC last Thursday night. Filmed over a period of two years, it follows the Director of the Oasis youth crisis centre in Darlinghurst, Sydney—Captain Paul Moulds—and his team as they provide basic, life-sustaining support for some of the 22,000 teenagers in Australia who are homeless every night in our wealthy country. In Paul Moulds' words, the job is to "try to stop desperate young people from jumping over the cliff".

It is disturbing and heart-wrenching, but it also leaves a glimmer of hope. Hope that comes from the fact that wonderful people like Paul exist and that they will probably never give up on the people in whom they see so much promise. Hope in the young people themselves—in their resilience, their inner fire. And hope that, for at least some of them, circumstance, their will to survive and the tenacious support of the Captain Paul Moulds of the world might come together—and as a result they might just live the rewarding, fulfilling lives that they and every other Australian deserve and to which they all, ultimately aspire. It can be viewed online at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/oasis/about/watch/watchFilm.htm.

While the film focuses on the important and challenging problems of youth homelessness, the basic messages it leaves apply, in my view, to all of the issues that result in social exclusion. I mentioned in an earlier post that I have lived with a disability most of my life and have spent a lot of my career contributing to the reform process that aims to remove the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from participating fully in society. As I watched the film I saw so many of the same dynamics in the situations of the young people in the film—and the systems and processes that try to support them but only survive on a shoestring and the goodwill of decent people—that I see so often faced by people with disabilities in our community. And I know that these are also the same issues that indigenous people, economically disadvantaged people, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and so on all face.

The first of these is the gap between the reality of what's going on on the ground and the decision-making process that decides what needs to be done. As our society has become bigger, more complex and less "personal" the gap between those who are disadvantaged and the issues they face and those who make the decisions about the programs, interventions and the money to be spent on them has widened to the point where, despite the best efforts of those who are in the privileged position to control the nation's resources, they simply can't understand—largely because they are NOT disadvantaged—what living life at the disadvantaged end of the spectrum really means.

The irony here is that, in the end, a "successful" life for someone who is currently excluded would look no different and should be no different to a "successful" life for anybody else. Life is a pathway. To be "successful" in life that pathway needs to be (mostly) smooth. Of course some people can deal with life's challenges reasonably well—but they are usually the ones with a combination of inner resilience, opportunity, resources, strong family and community support and a healthy dose of good luck. With those resources in their "life tool kit" the inevitable potholes in life can usually be overcome fairly easily.

The homeless youth in the film are not on a smooth life pathway. As the film so graphically shows, most have had virtually no opportunity, no resources, no family and community support and no luck. Even those with a healthy dose of inner resilience are so far behind the eight ball that the resilience that they may have started with either manifests as anti-social behaviour or simply gets eroded away. Their fire goes out.

I see it all the time. I have even felt it myself—the frustration, the anger and sometimes the insidious feeling of disempowerment that comes from living in a world that views me and others who are somehow "different" as somehow "lesser"—as second-class citizens. It is not just that these homeless young people don't have a home. It is that we (the "mainstream") haven't understood the complex set of issues that cause homelessness and we haven't created a plan to address all of these issues in unison—to create a smooth life pathway. We just don't understand them and their lives.

We CAN sort all of this out, of course. As I said in my previous post, the business sector in particular sorts out complex problems all the time—but it requires "big picture thinking": thinking that embraces the ENTIRE problem, not just the bits that, like an iceberg, appear above the surface.

The second is the fundamental role that self-esteem and hope play in every individual's life. These are not things that can be just injected into a person and they are certainly not things that are passively received by the individual. I believe one of the greatest builders of self-esteem is an individual's capacity to meet the expectations of our society: of our family and friends and of the community as a whole. A sense of achievement.

This is about rights and responsibilities.

A citizen who is fully included in society has a responsibility—not necessarily formalised and not even necessarily overtly recognised—to contribute to building and sustaining that society. And as they discharge their responsibility they have a right to expect that the society to which they contribute will provide them with the support they need to function effectively in society. On the other hand, society has a right to expect that individuals will take advantage of the combined efforts of its citizens to build a world in which individuals can contribute. It also has a responsibility to ensure that, as it builds that world, every citizen can take advantage of it.

That formula works well for the "average" citizen. Our mums and dads, our next door neighbours, the many others with whom we come into contact expect us to make a contribution and see it as only right that the resources we need to do so are available. We know that if that formula breaks down the "average" citizen wouldn't function well and wouldn't be able to contribute to society.

For the majority of those who are currently excluded from society, their exclusion has resulted in one way or another from an inability to access the massive infrastructure that we call "society"—an infrastructure that we have built by investing inconceivable amounts of money, time and effort. But instead of recognizing that the key reason people are not contributing is that this massive infrastructure hasn't been built with them and their needs in mind and we need to put effort and resource into fixing that, we simply lower our expectations of them. That, to me, is an abdication of one of the most basic responsibilities of society.

The third is about breaking the cycle. That's what Paul and his team try to do. And they succeed... sometimes. They would succeed more often if a) they had the resources to do the job properly and b) they were an integrated part of an overall intervention that connected a range of interventions, tailored to each individual, that created the smooth pathway that most of us take for granted. And one-off intervention—connected or otherwise—is not enough. Many of the social problems we face in our nation require sustained, continuous effort. Investment. Social investment.

Instead of trying to control and micro-manage the one-the-ground interventions that, like Paul's, are proving their worth, our systems and bureaucracies need to be facilitators and coordinators. Creating the linkages needs a helicopter view so let's do that at that level. Allocating resources can only be done by those who control those resources. That's not Paul: he was out on the streets at midnight with a tin trying to raise a few extra dollars that will at best only make a small dent in the financial challenges his organisation faces.

The fourth is about understanding people, understanding the diversity of human nature. The film didn't just show "homeless kids". It showed a huge variety of human beings. We are all different. We have different strengths and weaknesses. We respond differently to different situations—good and bad. While there was a strong commonality in the life situations that most of the kids had faced, in the end their responses to the situations were different.

The simple conclusion here? Our interventions need to build in that human diversity at every level—from inception and construction through to delivery. We need to place the individual at the centre of a set of coordinated interventions and programs. Design the programmes around the people, not the people around the programmes.

I spoke in my earlier post about the things we could learn from the success of the business sector and I'm sure many would argue that this area is probably not one of them (ie, understanding people ... doesn't Business just understand profit???). I would argue the opposite. The marketing function in any successful business is all about understanding that every "customer" sees the "product" differently. Every successful marketing program applies the concept of "market segmentation"—the process of identifying the different groups that make up the overall market, understanding what makes them "tick" and tailoring the message/product/solution to appeal to those different groups. The marketing function understands diversity perhaps better than any other.

The fifth (bear with me, I'm almost there!) is about normalising best practice. I'm sure like many others in this group I have seen countless pilot programs that prove, without any skerrick of a doubt, that there ARE achievable, practical solutions to virtually every social challenge we face. But I can number on one hand those that have gone beyond "proof of concept" to "business as usual" roll out. This makes absolutely no sense.

And the final one is about the economy. One of the key challenges I think we face at the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond is understanding that every one of the 10 streams that the Summit will focus on relates, in the end, to every other. I'm sure the 100 or so of us who will be focused on the Community stream will be able to come up with a range of great, practical solutions to our nation's most pressing social challenges. But they will go nowhere without a strong economy. And we need a secure nation. And an effective governance model. And a healthy society... We need to make those links.

And this is not a one-way thing. It's not just about needing a strong, wealthy economy to fund social programs. It is just as much about the contribution that an investment in social reform—and the increase in the productivity and contribution of all Australian citizens to the overall wealth of our nation that will result from genuine social reform—will make to the overall wealth of our nation. In business terms it's about "cost/benefit". Yes, there is a cost in funding Paul's programs and the many other clever, successful social intervention programs in all areas of disadvantage, all around the nation. But there is also a massive return.

To illustrate the point: If we offered opportunities for just a third of the working age people with disabilities who are currently sitting at home on Disability Support Pensions to access our basic community infrastructure, gain the education and training they need and as a result gain a job—that is 606,000 people—we would have fixed Australia's skills crisis. And we would have saved $3.6 billon annum in welfare payments and added $17 billion to Australia's GDP.

It’s not about cost, it’s about investment. Investment in Australia's future.

I never had a problem representing the great and the good. I could happily appear at events and present our corporate line with poise and charm. Or should that be poisoning charm. Well now I have departed from their clutches, to be me again, just like the picture. Why does that matter for SIX?

Regular folk do not understand formal corporate structures. Why should they? Generally they want to be happy and have good friends. Professional corporate types, on the other hand, like the mystique of complex concepts and power structures. They love the attributes of power. No big office, no desk, no priority parking, etc and they are devastated and sometimes unable to function. How, otherwise do you get respect?

In a major study aimed developing the idea of skills for sustainable communities experts in urban regeneration concluded that they were over fragmented and needed to develop better and overlapping skills. They did survey some non experts to get their input into this abstraction and they did ignore the result. That result was about the outcome of the regeneration processes. To the professionals it was a sort of sustainable regeneration paradise. To the regular folk it was to be happy and have friends.

“Things will develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme.” (Laozi, B.C. 500) This is a simple dialectic idea of Laozi, a great ancient ideologist 2500 years ago. However, the philosophy still holds today and it has been widely indicated in the recent history of China.

No doubts, the modern production and consumption, as an expression of industrial society, which have been developed in the last two centuries is still the mainstream of change today, and it has been reaching the limit of resource on the earth (Extreme). Therefore, it has to be recognized to change the change, changing the direction of the development of society and human being towards sustainability as a rebound from the extreme (Opposite direction).

In this transition China is supposed to make a big contribution to the world. It’s not only because we could always discover some helpful thoughts and inspirations from Chinese ancient or traditional ideology and philosophy that are disappearing from everyday life, but also in the last 30 years China has transited from an impoverished country into a world factory, which helps in providing China the opportunity to steer its direction.

Fortunately, China is being in action! A new movement has been launched by the central government of China---Harmonious Society, which came into picture after the big decision of the shift from economic development to sustainable development. For example, on 31st December 2007, a new regulation was announced by the central government, “It will be forbidden to produce and consume the super-flimsy plastic shopping bags after June, 2008”. Then something interesting happened recently: the traditional bamboo shopping baskets came back to the urban life even before this June. It means people are very open to sustainable lifestyle. Besides the top-down policies, the bottom-up social innovations are emerging and promoted in China. Many diffused social enterprises (Creative Communities) and sustainable lifestyles have been observed such as Car Sharing, PinKe, Group Purchase, Community Supporting Agriculture and etc. Those promising cases implicate the initiativ! es and anticipation of sustainable lifestyles from general people in everyday life spontaneously.

What could design and design research contribute when “things will develop in the opposite direction” in the approaches of top-down and bottom-up? Laozi provides a big universal vision for the future. However, more indicated visions, proposals and tools have to be investigated and developed to realize the sustainable society.

Certainly, we are still facing paradox realities: On one hand, we understand that design and designers are supposed to provide more contributions for sustainable development; on the other hand, we still get excited on continuous development of market oriented tools and designs. Design is recognized to be an important program and profession to impact the development of society in positive way with social responsibility. However, designers in China are facing a difficult employment situation as design departments are often subordinate to others. Though the innovations and creativities (it’s the nature of design) as a top down policy are promoted all over China, the value of design (budget of design project) during the last 10 years has still been on the decrease. China has a long history and culture in “Making Goods” and philosophy of “Usage”, but the design education system was mainly imported from western countries where modern design had been born out of industria! lization. For one thing, “Harmonious Society” and sustainable society has been a big vision of society in China; for another, Design seems part of problem more than part of solution for this vision.

In a word, China is a paradox focus between traditional philosophy, rapid industrialization and the ideal of harmonious society. Reality is complex and it is a part of reason why we need research work. Fortunately, Design is complex as well and that’s why design is expected to face the reality in advance. With the strong support from the local partner of China, Tongji University, there are active reactions in the academic and professional fields of design, architecture and civil society. Experiences from China would be expected to exchange and discuss in the conference.
(this is a blog article for conference, Changing the change)

I thought members of SIX might be interested in the following post I added to the Australia 2020 Summit participants' website:

After such a long, dark period in Australia's social development history, it feels so good to feel the warmth of the social inclusion agenda. Michael Chaney, until recently the President of the Business Council of Australia, couldn't have said it better in his final address at the BCA Annual Dinner last year when he said that, after a significant period of change that had delivered enormous benefits for the business sector and those who benefit most from its success personally, it is now time that our wealthy nation applied its capacity to make things happen to sorting out some of the nation's most pressing social challenges. And to me it doesn't matter what the driving force for this shift in thinking is—the economic imperative of the skills shortage, pressure from those who have been excluded, or a genuine recognition across the community there are real solutions to even our most pressing social problems—the fact is that for the first time in a long time our nation is poised for a new and exciting period of genuine social reform.

In addressing those challenges, particularly for those who have suffered most from our nation's almost single-minded focus on generating economic wealth and the inequities that so often result from a capitalist, market-driven approach to doing so—indigenous people, people with disabilities, the many other people whose disadvantage has resulted from lack of access to the opportunities afforded to the majority of Australians—we may well be able to to make rapid progress by applying the same principles, methods and structures that the business sector has used so successfully to deliver the benefits about which Michael Chaney spoke.

For most of my adult life I have worn two hats: the first, a hat of privilege, has come from a long and rewarding career in the business sector; the second, a hat of a "second-class citizen" has resulted from spending most of my adult life with a significant disability (quadriplegia). Early in my adult life I realised that when we combine smart thinking, money and process we can achieve amazing things. Solve the most challenging problems. Fly to the moon—literally. And in our modern society it is, without doubt, the business sector that controls the vast majority of those resources.

Early in my career I had the opportunity to test a simple premise: can we, and is there any value in applying the same techniques that the business sector uses so successfully to achieve its goals to finding solutions to complex social problems?

Perhaps not surprisingly the answer was "yes". In the end the business sector is no different to any other part of our society. It is a group of people working together to achieve common goals. There is one big difference though between, say, Toyota producing cars and Australia "producing" opportunities for all of its citizens to contribute and to benefit from that contribution. Toyota controls and manages its entire business—from the research and development and the arrival of raw materials at the factory door through to the delivery of the finished vehicle to the customer at the other end.

That's not the way we deliver social reform. We do it in bits—disconnected bits. Take people with disabilities for example. They receive initial treatment for their disability, often in the health system. If they need a carer at home they need to seek that from a separate government or private service. If they need accessible housing that comes from yet another separate government or private source. Their transport—if it is available at all—is delivered separately again by the Department of Transport or a private bus or taxi operator. The education system has been working hard to provide educational opportunities for people with disabilities but it doesn't link to the transport system, the housing system, the carer system, the health system—or the employment system at the other end.

The average person in Australia travels on the "highway" of life. Life is (mostly) a smooth journey. Not only can they access all the things they need to lead a rewarding, productive life—housing, transport, education, work, play—they can move from one to the other on their life journey quickly and smoothly.

People who are excluded from full participation in our society travel on the " backroads" of life. Life is not a smooth journey. Even those who overcome the barriers to participation don't do so easily. And for many there are just too many potholes, broken bridges and brick walls. For those people who have been largely left out as we have built the robust society we now live in, the aspirations they share with every other citizen—to lead a decent, rewarding life—are often elusive.

But this is where the business sector's incredible capacity to produce incredible things and to sort out incredibly complex problems has so much to offer. Toyota doesn't run its business as Australia runs the "business" of social inclusion—as a largely disconnected set of silos. It's left hand knows what its right hand is doing. Its research and development team talk to its production team, to its finance team, to its human resources team, to its marketing team. And they, in turn, talk to each other. They treat the process of transforming the inputs to the business—raw materials, money, people and intellectual property—into outputs (cars) as a continuum. As a pathway. If they ran their business the way the world runs social inclusion they'd be out of business.

It's not the only solution to building stronger communities, to achieving our social inclusion goals. But borrowing the knowledge of how to get things done—the systems, structures and processes that make up all successful enterprises—has, in my view, a great deal to offer in creating pathways for the millions of our fellow Australian citizens who can and want to make a contribution to building the society that I'm sure we all want to be proud of.

The UpRising website is now live and recruitment is under way!

UpRising is a leadership programme that has been developed by the Young Foundation to support
and train a new generation of public leaders. We want to identify,
recruit, develop and support 19 to 25 year olds to enable them to play
a greater role in politics and public decision-making. The aim is to
create a pool of talented young leaders from diverse backgrounds that
can take up positions of power in public institutions. The first year of the pilot programme will begin in May 2008 in the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

If you want to apply for UpRising or just want to know more, visit the site by clicking here 

The winner of the "Social Enterprise of the Year Award, 2007", in the UK has just been announced - Divine Chocolate Ltd, a company part owned by a number of fair trade agencies and a Ghanaian cocoa farmers cooperative.

Read more about Divine innovative bussiness model.