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Copied wholesale from the Cal press release on NewsBlaze LLC:

The 9th annual Global Social Venture Competition at the University of California’s Haas School of Business. Ten business school teams from the United States, Indonesia, Taiwan and France will present their plans for businesses with both a financial and a social or environmental bottom line.

The finalists’ business ideas range from microbial fuel cells and safe syringes to socially responsible outsourcing to Africa. Plan summaries are online at:
http://socialvc.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=237. The business plan presentations are open to the public.

The 2008 Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship will cap off the competition.
It will feature keynote addresses and panels as well as the announcement of and presentation by the competition’s Social Impact Assessment Prize winner, chosen from one of this year’s finalist teams.

- Global Social Venture Competition

WHEN: 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., Friday, April 18

WHERE: Wells Fargo Room, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. A map is online at: http://www.berkeley.edu/map.

- 2008 Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship (registration required)

WHEN:
9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday April 19

WHERE:
UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. A map and directions are online at: http://www.ahl-missionbay.com/directions.cfm.

WHO:
Pamela Hartigan, founding partner of Volans Ventures and founding managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and Jason Green, general partner of Emergence Capital Partners, among others.

BACKGROUND:
The competition was founded by five Berkeley MBA students at the Haas School of Business in 1999 and has since then grown into an international partnership between the Haas School, Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business and Yale School of Management.

Thammasat University in Thailand, ESSEC Business School in France, the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and a consortium of business schools in South Korea called Social Venture Competition Korea provided additional support by soliciting MBA teams from their respective international regions.

The Global Social Venture Competition is the largest and oldest student-led business plan competition providing mentorship, exposure and financial awards to emerging social ventures from around the world.

For more information, go to http://www.gsvc.org or http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness/2008GSVCSymposium.htm.

Susan Sanderman of Denver just forwarded this fascinating World Clock that shows the current status of major global health, environmental and social statistics, updated in real time.  It’s like an impact dashboard for the Planet!
This kind of ‘impact context’ should be a touchstone for any impact analysis– if focused down to the region where a company or organization does its work,  it makes a great starting point for what the “addressable market” is in terms of any of these social or environmental issues.  Working to prevent biodiversity loss?  Malaria?  Drowning?  Use your impact analysis to say not just, we’re preventing X instances, but also, “Here’s how much our solution will slow it from the current rate of loss.”  That makes it MUCH more meaningful.
World Clock’s makers compiled it from highly credible sources of statistical datasets, but they have not verified any of it and it may be spotty in parts, so it would be worth verifying if you use it.

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