Making a Difference While Making a Living- Social Innovation Programs

People need initiatives that help give hope and meaning to their lives. If our society is to survive and even grow through the massive hardships that people are facing, we need more individual beacons of hope that are able to touch the lives of others. We need these beacons to shine from all cultures, backgrounds and communities. Social Innovation proects offer a means to plan for and promote those ideas that can provide the hope, support and empowerment that is so desperately needed. Social Innovation project supporters are being sought through a grant announcement sponsored by the Corporation for National Community Services. It gives innovators the opportnity to realize their ideas and hopes for improvement in their own communities. The areas that are of specific interest include: Economic Development, Youth and Education and Health. According to the grant announcement, ""The Corporation (for National and Community Service) considers “social innovation” as the development of a potentially transformative practice or approach to meeting critical social challenges. An approach is “transformative” if it not only produces strong measurable outcomes, but also 1) significantly impacts or informs the public discussion about systems of service delivery, 2) addresses more than one critical social challenge concurrently, or 3) produces dramatic cost savings through efficiency gains." This series of programs are designed to offer tangible solutions to the critical issues that are challenging the quality of life in various populations. Each segment will begin with a clearly stated problem, along statistics about the problem before inviting participants to help develop workable solutions. We invite forward thinkers, entrepreneurs and solutions oriented talkers to engage in meaningful problem solving. These episodes will be forwarded to government officials to let them review solutions oriented discussions. WEBSITE-