All Square is a craft grilled cheese restaurant and professional institute that breaks down barriers for those with a criminal record. A criminal record can be a barrier to employment, housing, benefits, and voting. With barriers to employment and housing, there is a high rate of recidivism. One study across 30 states found that 67.8%…
Be Curious, Leap In and Learn with Paul Polak
Paul Polak is the founder of iDE. At the age of 80, he launched three new social enterprises. Paul was born in Czechoslovakia near Germany. In 1938, his family watched as refugees poured across the border. Paul says, “The conventional wisdom in 1938 was that Hitler was a joke and all this stuff would blow over….
138, Julius Ibrahim, Second Shot Coffee | Heart, Head, and Hustle to end Homelessness
Julius Ibrahim is tackling homelessness one espresso at a time. In her book, Work on Purpose, Echoing Green alumni Lara Galinsky offers this formula: Heart + Head = Hustle By heart, she means your emotions. By head, she is referring to your skills and abilities. And by hustle…well, every entrepreneur knows exactly what that looks…
120, Paul Bradley, ROC USA | Housing Security for Mobile Home Owners
ROC USA is a non-profit organization with a mission of making quality resident ownership possible nationwide. When Paul Bradley was studying economics in university, he became interested in cooperative business models. “It immediately appealed to me,” he told me. “By its structure, it’s a more broadly distributing form of business ownership. Resources are shared more…
089, Alexandria Lafci, New Story | Disrupting Community Development through Story-Driven Crowdfunding
New Story is disrupting community development. They accomplish that through a story-driven crowdfunding process for building homes. But, they’re not just building houses, they’re creating communities. And, in the process, they are changing the donor experience. To explain all of this, we’re joined today by Alexandria Lafci, a cofounder and the head of operations for New…
047, Sammie Rayner, HandUp | Social Good in Your Neighborhood
When it comes to social good, we often think we have to do something world-changing. In his book All the Trouble in the World, P. J. O’Rourke said Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. If you think about it, that’s human nature. We love the grand gesture,…
045, Francesco Piazzesi, Echale a tu casa | Housing As Community Development
Francesco Piazzesi uses housing as a means of community development. He grew up in the construction equipment industry. He noticed that the brick mason who spent his days building houses went home to a tin shack with a dirt floor. In many countries around the world, including Mexico, 2/3 of the houses built are built…