Project Gain

Germany

The Goodvestment is a new form of crowd-funded investment that does social good. It enables you to lift people out of poverty by making them financially self-sustainable.

Together, we enable great development aid organizations to scale their outstanding programs to a multitude of people. At the same time, we bring you closer to the people you help than conventional donations.

Project Gain’s unique internet platform changes the perception, the impact and the scale of development assistance while at the same time building a humanitarian participatory bridge for the people who support people in developing countries. You invest in a Goodvestment, a fair, no-harms microcredit for a person in a help-to-self-help program of a development assistance organisation. You see the person you are helping, and you see what they build in the process. In the end the Goodvestment is repaid, with a fair, small interest rate.

Website - www.goodvestment.com

New Solar Pump

Austria

The NSP Solar Pump is a solar pump station for drinking water supply and irrigation specifically for sustainable development aid in developing countries.
It is low maintenance and independent of any power supply and pumps water up for free!
Currently in the regions in Africa in which it is operating in, 90% of pumps that are used are hand pumps which need a lot of maintenance, and don’t bring enough water to the ground as well as people needing to pump water by hand.

The smallest system can supply people up to 1,000 people in developing countries with clean water.

The innovation is the combination of delivering water by using the renewable energy of sun in consideration with the lack of technology standards in developing countries by using a maintenance free pump system and pumping water for free.

Since July 2012, 800 people benefited from clean water for drinking and agriculture uses in Mozambique. NSP have worked with the development organisation ‘World Vision’ to install their first system in Africa.

Website - www.newsolarpump.com

MyMind

Ireland

MyMind is a self-referral model of mental health. They provide psychological and psychotherapy services to people who are seeking mental health support.

MyMind is a service open to everyone, currently based in Dublin and Cork supported online by the “e-MyMind” platform, offering mental health services to people with mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety, addiction, work-related stress and suicidal thoughts.

As a non-profit social enterprise, MyMind are committed to the clients first, with ambitions to scale up and help more people annually. Profits made from fee-paying clients are used to subsidise clients who cannot afford full fees. This highly scalable business model allows rapid growth - MyMind is one of a few Irish charities with potential to grow a social enterprise model in a sustainable manner, so as not to depend on grants and donations in the future, if they can achieve a critical mass of annual clients using their services.

Since 2007, MyMind has supported over 9,000 people directly.

Website - www.mymind.org

Give What You're Good At

UK

Give What You're Good At matches professionals who want to give their skills with charities and social enterprises who need them.
The vision is to make it easy for every professional to use their skills for good, and to make it easy for every nonprofit and social enterprise to access and effectively use pro bono as a way to build capacity within their organisation.

GWYGA is a free online platform matching professionals who want to give their skills with non-profits that need them. Charities go through a simply diagnostic to identify their barriers to social impact. In 2012 they made 402 matches resulting in £1.3m of service.

GWYGA's formulaic technology has added £1.6m to the 3rd sector since our launch in March 2012. 98% of professionals they match come back to do another project. Their work has been funded by The Cabinet Office, Nesta and UnLtd. We have 90+ sector partners covering 210,000 non-profits.

Website - www.givewhatyouregoodat.co.uk

Granny's Finest

Netherlands

Two Dutch entrepreneurs have melded the fashion sense of young designers with the knitting knowledge of local grannies to create a range of desirable knitwear. This knitwear is sold in a concept store and in several stores in the Netherlands.

Niek explains his inspiration behind Granny’s Finest. ‘I was visiting my grandfather in a retirement home and I always saw an old lady knitting. She didn't have any relatives or friends to knit for but she kept on because it kept her busy and she enjoyed it’. That "oma" (granny in Dutch) and the return of knitwear to the catwalk gave him the idea to team up modern designs with traditional techniques and fashion designers with knitting grannies, in a project that also combines two Dutch typical concerns: social cohesion and making a profit.

"My grandchildren don't like to wear what I knit and I didn't have anyone to knit for anymore," said Willy Mollenaar, one of the grannies. Now she does, since her knitted pieces are sold in the Granny's Finest Concept Store.

Website - www.grannysfinest.com

Ung Omsorg Sverige

Sweden

Ung Omsorg (Young Care) creates bridges between generations by organizing youth on elder care homes to engage in social activities.

Ung Omsorg employs and organises 600 young people on 50 elderly care homes all over Sweden. The young people, aged between 14-19 years old visit the care homes for a few hours each weekend to organise social activities with the elderly people such as walks outside, singing songs, playing games or simply having a cup of coffee and a chat.

The young people get a good purposeful part-time job while studying, and the elderly people get a little extra activity in the weekend and a connection to today’s youth.

Since everyone working in Ung Omsorg is younger than 25, they aim to be a youthful organization where everyone can learn the basics of the working life like schedules, taxes, leadership and so on. They have at least 65 young people with leadership responsibilities, as well as an internal leadership academy where they can learn team leadership skills.

Website - www.ungomsorg.se