That audience might also be interested in Encore Careers. "The growing network of people in encore careers is transforming the workplace and the way that people think about work. More and more individuals in the second half of life are combining continued income with personal fulfillment and social impact." Here's a success story about a social entrepreneur. URL: http://sbdcrn.blogspot.com/2009/02/sba-resources-for-boomer-startups.html
Here's a success story about a social entrepreneur of Joseph James:
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, chemistry classes suddenly seemed less relevant to Joseph James. Instead, the college student gravitated toward economic development.
While working in multiple government offices over three decades, he continually looked for ways to bring equity to disadvantaged people and communities. But he felt stymied by the inability of government and the private sector to create big change for the poor, especially those in rural and minority communities.
James jumped ship in 2004, launching a nonprofit called The Corporation for Economic Opportunity that is designed to help black farmers profit through new environmental practices. He called his initiative “The Greening of Black America – A Rural Development Opportunity.”
The goal is to create new jobs, revitalize rural communities, help farmers retain their land, and improve nutrition and health in inner-city neighborhoods. By creating opportunities for black farmers in the growing biomass industry, James also is attempting to level the playing field for rural blacks after years of discrimination.
“There has been a tremendous loss of land,” James said, “a denial of fair price, loss of markets, discrimination and manipulation that helped make black farmers unsuccessful.”
His initiative motivates farmers to grow oil seed crops to make biodiesel fuel. Biomass doesn’t travel well, so biofuel businesses come directly to these rural communities, in the process creating jobs in the harvest, treatment and sale of biomass products.
“South Carolina can produce and consume a lot of renewable energy,” James explained. “And we can create a situation where less fuel and food is shipped great distances and more of it is consumed locally, which is better for everyone in terms of climate change.”
Funding from the U.S. Department of Energy fueled James’ creation of the South Carolina Biomass Council, which has developed a multimillion-dollar state biomass incentives and grants program.
Within three years, investments stimulated by the council are expected to generate $300 million in the state. Within five years, James hopes that hundreds of farmers will be growing dedicated bio-crops and dozens of new operators, many African-American, will be processing biomass for sale to biomass processors, electric utilities and other users.
The solution is broader than biomass. South Carolina is one of the nation’s most food-insecure states, with approximately 20 percent of its population considered hungry, according to the USDA. James is connecting farmers with limited market opportunities to inner-city residents who have little access to nutritious, fresh vegetables at affordable prices addresses several needs. His initiative will also reduce the fuel used to transport food from distant places to local markets.
Soon the Corporation for Economic Opportunity hopes to launch a farmers’ market at a 6,000-member church in a largely African-American community where farmers within a 75-mile radius can sell their produce. It will be the county’s first farmers market, and the opportunity it provides farmers’ is almost a lifeline.
By 2012 James projects the number of farmers selling produce at this and similar new markets will grow threefold, and the number of weekly shoppers will triple to 1,500.
Partnerships with the church’s health guild and the state’s Eat Smart, Move More initiative will allow James’ group to create a community garden and provide wellness programs there.
“I am particularly concerned about the health issues that disproportionately affect black people. We have to speak to these needs,” said Pastor Charles Jackson of Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia, S.C..
James is eager to make this program work, eager to make sure that a rising tide, in the form of new business opportunities and new industries, really will lift all boats this time.
“I want to see people who have been denied opportunity grab the potential this program has and succeed,” James said. “We’re watching a new sector develop, and the time to get in is now. My experience has been that it is very hard for blacks to break into mature industries. But if we can make this happen here and now, we can make it happen anywhere.”
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Source URL: http://www.encore.org/user/Joseph_James#
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