Be Your Change

Women “make up around 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries”. They are especially disadvantaged and usually have more limited access to both information and services. They hold more responsibilities around the house and are now taking over more and more of the agricultural workload as men migrate out of town to find work. My guest today on Be Your Change is Vava Angwenyi, founder of the social enterprise Vava coffee. Vava was born and raised in Kenya. In 2009, she decided to become part of the solution and founded the social enterprise Vava Coffee. Vava saw smiles where others only saw poverty, corruption, and fears. She noticed the voices of coffee farmers and their needs to be heard. Vava focuses on helping women gain confidence and financial independence in Kenya.

In this episode of Be Your Change podcast, you will learn how Alice Bosley, co- founder of 51 Labs Labs  decided to move to Iraq to launch the first social impact incubator. So I'm very excited for her to speak about what is and her mission. Read our full blog post. "These are incredible people, right? I mean these are people with college educations and professional experiences and hopes and dreams and talents. And, when we think about displacement, we think about these people as either kind of poor and helpless or as burdens on society. And I think five one labs wanted to flip that on its head, right? These are assets. This is human capital that has been displaced into a place. often entrepreneurship is an incredible way for people to overcome some of the challenges in accessing jobs at their level. You may not have  connections, you might not have kind the opportunities to break into the job space, but if you have these skills, then you're able to launch a business. And so we provide training and office space and mentorship and connections, to help these amazing people to launch, amazing businesses"We just hosted an investor trip and an investor from Bahrain called us and he was like, you've gotta be kidding me. Right? Like Iraq. There's no entrepreneurship in Iraq. And so I think it's just, it's so challenging and, and no one believes it. And yet, despite all of that, like the evidence is that there are incredible young people that are doing this without any support. Right? And that's even, you know, here in the Bay area there are tons of entrepreneurs, but it's also a lot easier to be an entrepreneur and there are role models and there are people saying like, yeah, you can do this. And they're literally, everything is against you. And yet there are still successful people doing it. And so I think that that is pretty addictive. So part of it might be the adventure that it was just a fun place to go to at the beginning.Women empowermentSo we now run something called the incubate women's initiative, which is not the most creative name in the world, but, um, where we bring in women leaders from the community every other week to talk to our women entrepreneurs and their very intimate conversations where they share, um, they share kind of tips and challenges and, and create this supportive community, which is really important because often their families are saying like, you are crazy.Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, by opposition activist groups, vary between 384,000 and about 586,100 as of March 202051 LabsBe Your Change Instagram 

My guest today is Wingee Sampaio. She is the global director with the Cartier Women’s Initiative, an international program to support women's social entrepreneurs as a force for good. Her role is to coach women entrepreneurs in the early stages of their business to make sure they are driving social change and reaching their full potential in partnership with many other organizations.

In today’s episode, we sit down with the host and co-producer of the One in Four podcast Beatrice Spadacini...One in Four podcast looks to educate, humanize and elevate the conversations about previously incarcerated people re-entering society. The criminal justice system is no better, Minorities, and especially men of color, are targeted more compared to their white counterparts...Just to give you an idea of what we are dealing with, 1 in 3 black men and 1 in 6 Latino men are incarcerated in the U.S...compared to 1 in 17 white men. 1 in 18 black women compared to 118 white women but Beatrice thinks criminal justice was designed that way. We discuss with Beatrice with staggering numbers, her podcast and what we can do to help this incredibly tragic problem is Beatrice Spadacini…

In this week’s episode, we are celebrating International Women’s Day by talking with women from an organization named RefuShe. It’s an organization that works with refugee girls in East Africa. We sit down with Jailan Adly who is the president of Refushe and Esperance Gikundiro who is a refugee herself and now a board member of the organization.

In today’s episode, we travel to a town east of Paris named Montreuil. Montreuilis to Paris what Oakland is to San Francisco, a vibrant multicultural youngthe dynamic and creative suburb of Paris.Montreuil is also well-known for its left-wing politics, with a rate close to 26% ofimmigrants, the city has been led by a succession of Mayor affiliated with theFrench communist but also the Green party. The result is an incredible meltingpot of culture, diverse languages, and deep artistic cultures that goes back to theearly century with the movie industry.

Meryl Lieberman is the co-founder of the non-profit Casa Milagro, or House of Miracles. We are talking to Meryl today about her commitment and innovative approach to end homelessness and address mental health in Santa Fe, New Mexico. About 2 percent of the global population, or 150 million people are homeless. In the United States alone in 2019, more than five hundred thousand people reported being homeless…and the number of people experiencing homelessness in New Mexico is on the rise. From 2018 to 2019, the number of people living on the streets rose by 27 percent, one of the largest increases in the country.

Dianne Calvi is the CEO of Village Enterprise. She started with the non-profit in 2010. She has grown the organization from 13 employees to now 200 and overtime she has helped over 1 million people transition out of poverty. Village Enterprise works towards achieving the United Nations’ first sustainable development goal...to end extreme poverty by 2030. And the UN defines extreme poverty by people living on less than one dollar and 25 cents a day. As of last year, more than half of the world’s population living in extreme poverty is located in sub-Saharan Africa...and that is who Village Enterprise works with. Juliette Roy talks with Dianne about her work as the Ceo of Village enterprise and how the non-profit has been making strides in lifting people, mostly women, out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2015, the United Nations introduced seventeen sustainable goals to transform the world by 2030. These goals provide a framework to build a conscious world. They cover a lot of ground from poverty to sustainability and education. Today, we are introducing goal number 5 to address gender equality which is also tied up to decent work conditions and economic growth, goal number 8. So what do the goals mean really? To understand them in action, I’m excited to introduce our guest, Drakshan Khan. She has decided to be part of the solutions to transform the reality of women in Pakistan.

Today, we are taking a look at the social impact space. Our guest Neetal Parekh is a long-term advocate and expert in social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship is a new type of business that is growing fast.

Today we are taking a look at social entrepreneurship and media. These emerging economies bringing new players in the media space while promoting investment in mission driven companies and building a new Exciting media ecosystem.

Today we are talking about Fair Trade with Karrie Pukstas from Kroger and Abby Ayers from the certification organization Fair Trade USA. You'll learn how we can all contribute to provide decent conditions for workers and get them out of the poverty cycle just by how we shop.

In this episode, you'll learn how Lubiana found her voice through an unusual encounter with the Kora. Kora is called the African guitar but is much more than a traditional musical instrument. It ties the world of music to spirituality and oral tradition. Traditionally played by male, Lubiana is one of the rare women who has emerged as an uprising singer-songwriter, kora player and is on her way to become a griot herself. You will learn about the shocking numbers of gender disparity when it comes to music in sounds and hears from Terri Winston, executive director of Women's Audio Mission.

In this episode, we discuss the rise of the women podcasting community. Jeanine shares with us how men and women do differently when they podcast. Highly informative.

What is Fair Trade? And how can it contribute to ending poverty? Find out by listening to this episode, with Elisha Chan, the executive director of Fair Trade Los Angeles and the founder of elishac store and the Elisha C foundation in Haiti. Learn how easy it can be for you to improve people's life. Producer Barbara Gorrand Executive Producer Juliette Roy

In this episode, you'll learn about how Eunice and Sabrina Moyle used their design company Hello Lucky to create positive change and engage the youth to get their voices heard. You will also learn how their experiences growing up outside of the U.S have influenced their work. Photography by Zoe Larkin.

In this episode, you learn about Laina Raveendran Greene, the co-founder of Angels of Impact, a company investing in responsibly produced goods made by women living in poverty.

Changing the world starts by looking at how we spend money, from daily purchases to long-term pension funds. Today on Be Your Change we explore impact investing. The term has different meanings for different people, but the basic idea is to make sure the money we invest has a good impact on the world. Rosa Lee Harden is a leader in the social impact movement and a co-founder of Social Capital Markets (SOCAP), one of the biggest conferences about impact investing.

In this episode, you’ll learn how social therapy grew out of a movement for social change.Social therapy is a group-oriented model that looks at patients as social performers, people capable of being change-makers. I am talking to Joyce Dattner, a leader in the social therapy community. She will explain how practitioners of this therapy relate to the group, not the individual…

In this episode, you will learn how Anna Lecat and Melanie Viallon co-founders of Les Lunes are building an eco-friendly fashion line made of bamboo fabric.

How can we reduce our consumption of single use plastic? Stephanie Regni shares her experience starting Fillgood, a refill organic skin care and cleaning product company to help us reach a zero plastic waste home.

Create the world you want to live in. Be Your Change is about empowering people to create a sustainable, healthy, eco-friendly supportive world, where success means we live a fulfilling life in harmony with our family, friends, communities, and values. Find out more at beyourchange.co