A signature program of SEI is the senior capstone course, Advanced Studies in Social Entrepreneurship. This course helps students understand the role that agricultural cooperatives and enterprises play in alleviating extreme poverty among rural smallholder farmers. To achieve this objective, students travel to Nicaragua to apply their classroom learning and Read more…
Michael Behan, a senior in his last semester at Northeastern University pursuing a business major with a dual concentration in Social Entrepreneurship and Finance, was running in a small ultra marathon race. In order to get there he needed to drive about fifteen hours, the last six of which were Read more…
The idea of “impact investing” is gaining a great deal of attention these days, including in undergraduate education. While many institutions have offered classes in strategic philanthropy in recent years, and of course in traditional business investing for many, we have focused our efforts at SEI on developing educational programs for a new third way of investing. This new investment discipline involves socially minded investors providing capital to both for profit and non-profit enterprises that are committed to efficiently addressing social problems in both a sustainable and innovative way.
Earlier this month we lost one of our beloved students, Naman Shah, to an untimely death at the age of 21. His short life reminds me of a something I read long ago, that given a choice between a life of comfort and a life of meaning, the wise person will choose the latter. We too often hear of unnecessary and premature deaths in the world, in fact we’ve all seen the statistic that several thousand children die needlessly each day from poverty and disease. Every life matters, and yet when it’s someone you know, whose path crossed yours, the idea of a senseless death in the face of such promise is that much more powerful.
10 volunteers from the Social Enterprise Institute have been involved in an exciting volunteering program through Citizen Schools, in partnership with Haley House in Dudley Sqaure. Citizen Schools is a national not-for-profit organization aiming to improve inner city education by extending the school day through the use of “apprenticeships”. Apprenticeships are taught Read more…
With two co-ops at social investing firms under her belt, Rosie Sharp, a senior studying finance and social entrepreneurship with a minor in international affairs had developed a comprehensive understanding of impact investing and rural agriculture. In August 2011, a co-op opportunity with One Acre Fund enabled Sharp to put Read more…