Class Week 5

This week was a little disappointed. We were unable to achieve what we wanted with the two hundred dollar project and we have to revise a lot of parts of our storefront presentation. For the two hundred dollar project, I was expecting to finish the t-shirts earlier but that ended up being pushed back. When the shirts were finally done, we only had a couple of days to sell the t-shirts. I wished we had more time to sell the t-shirts but I definitely regret not being able to help with making the t-shirts because we could have had t-shirts started being sold on Monday; instead of having to sell on just Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It is just a shame for us to be so unprepared to sell these t-shirts that we had weeks to prepare for. We still have a high quantity of t-shirts, and we still hope to be able to continue selling these t-shirts. This week I was not able to sell t-shirts with my group members because of my prior arrangements that I had. I wish I could have made selling the t-shirts a priority but I think my other commitment are more important to myself.
The storefront still need to have more edits done. I think our practice presentation went ok but there is a lot to be done. We need to finalize our roles and what we are speaking about. I think our biggest problem with speaking is the enthusiasm in our tone of voice and lacking key specifics in our speeches. We tend to speak about some vague strong point in our storefront but never really give something concrete. I our presentation has to contain more images and some key numbers to really pop out so that the audience is not bored at seeing the same thing.

Week 5 How to Change the World

After finishing this book, I have this new picture of non profit sector of the world and how amazing and ordinary how these people are who become social entrepreneurs. This book is very inspiring for me. There were so many examples of people that care about one particular issue and made an organization to solve that issue and going through numerous obstacles. Not a single person had a easy time to build up their organization. They all had doubters. They did not have the resources at first to make it big. They all started with an idea and had the motivation to keep on going with that idea. They were determine to make it a reality and had the passion to show others that it is possible. I feel that a lot of time many people can think that they can make a business out of anything and become a millionaire just by doing that. I think a lot of the time they fail because they do not have the passion to do it for the rest of their life, they think of it as a phase that can be tossed away into their past and be forgotten. Social entrepreneurs would never act like that because their goals are never to make money and a lot of time money is the reason why people give up. For social entrepreneur, money is a obstacle that must be overcome to show how much they truly care about making change. For me, I don't care about money and just care about changing the problems I see in society. My goal is not be a millionaire. My goal is not to live a life luxury. My goal is to see the future of others prosper and live a life of opportunities and freedom. I feel that I can become a social entrepreneur is very possible.

Class Week 4

This week, I feel that we were very productive. We were finally able to finalize what we had to do to make sure we can sell our t-shirts. We have already made sure that there is some sort of a buzz among the school about our t-shirts and we have the shirts made, so on Monday I hope to sell most of our t-shirts. Right now we have the t-shirts priced at $10 but if that is too much we can lower down the prices as the week goes by. Our goal is to sell at least 20 t-shirts, 4 shirts per day but most of the shirts will be probably sold on Monday. Right now everything is looking good for the $200 project. The only thing I am worried about is the demand does not meet my expectations. Right now it looks like it will be popular but there is always that chance that no one actually wants to buy it. Since it is winter, t-shirts are not the best things to be selling today.
The store front project also looks really good. I think that plan we gave to Mr. Gladstone looks pretty good. I think we made the necessary changes to make it better. I made sure everything was more focus. Before we were everywhere with the storefront, sometimes we are focus the all demographics, then adults, then teens, so I made sure that we were focused on our ideas on getting teens to be our main demographic. I hope making that change will really help our plans. The only problem I have right now is that our numbers for the storefront seems very optimistic and we are asking for a lot of money. I believe that the storefront would make a lot of money but Mr. Gladstone might not be able to picture the same vision I have for the store and the potential it has.

Week 4: How to Change the World

The chapters I read this week are a lot more interesting than the other chapters. The first chapter was about how the organization Ashoka, an organization that help social entrepreneur achieve their goals, find qualified social entrepreneur. They said they look for four essential qualities to being an entrepreneur, creativity, entrepreneurial quality, social impact of the idea, and ethical fiber. They also discounted writing ability. It was strange to me at first that they discounted writing ability but the more I think about it, it did not matter if you could write something persuasive to get money or grants because that will not change the fact whether your motivated to make social change. I feel that the hardest thing to determine is ethical fiber because anyone can show a good ethic during an interview but have little to none moral principles, but as I read more the way they analyze these people are very intense. They go through multiple interviews to determine if they possess this characteristic. After reading that, I wondered if I had the qualities they were looking for but I questioned if I really did because this group took it so seriously that the effort I could put in will nowhere match their expectations. 

The other chapter is about the a woman trying to change the health care system in Brazil. She noticed that it was pointless in curing someone of a disease and sending them back to the same place where they got the disease without anything that could protect them. She saw this mostly in the slums of Brazil so she decided to start lobbying for change. I see these types of problems where we only solve the initial problem but not the core of it. Like charity, it only funds the solutions to feeding a couple of hundred of people but it will not solve world hunger. Finding the problem of why a certain group of people don't have food is necessary to create a permanent solution. A lot of time we look for the easy solution but it will still lead to same the problem occurring again.