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Monthly Archives: September 2012
September 11, 2012, 9:07 am
Cash Rewards Spur Poor Communities to Pay for Sanitation Projects
Children try out a new hand-washing station. (Photograph by East Meets West Foundation)
An international aid charity is taking an unorthodox approach to helping people in Cambodia and Vietnam improve sanitation and hygiene: It asks beneficiaries to help pay for the construction of latrines and hand-washing stations, but then gives them cash rewards when they get results. The effort will now spread, thanks to a $10.9-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The East Meets West Foundation, in Oakland, Calif., works with local groups to provide hygiene education, train masons to build high-quality latrines, and broker low-cost loans that families can use to install latrines and hand-washing devices. Families receive a $10 rebate to help offset construction costs after an independent group has…
September 5, 2012, 8:09 pm
Update: Salesforce.com Retreats on Trademarking ‘Social Enterprise’
The software giant Salesforce.com has announced that it plans to withdraw its applications to trademark the term “social enterprise.”
The company, which had sought the trademark in Great Britain, Jamaica, the United States, and the European Union, has been using the term in its advertising for the last two years to describe how businesses use social media to connect with customers. In its announcement, Salesforce.com pointed to the outcry from nonprofits and socially minded businesses as the primary reason for its reversal.
“It was never our intention to create confusion in the social sector which we have supported since our founding,” Marc Benioff, chief executive of Saleforce.com, said in a written statement. “As a result of the feedback we received, Salesforce.com has decided to withdraw its efforts to trademark the term ‘social enterprise’ and plans to discontinue its use…
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