I was at Global Social Venture Conference last week. It was a great event where one could feel the spirit of social entrepreneurship in the air. I was excited about the potential about seeing 'red shirts' taking over Bangkok but that did not happen (too much of a bangladeshi -- love that political action..). However, what did happen was in a strange way my life came in a full circle --
For those of you who don't know, the birth of IIX is very linked to the birth and sale of OneNest. OneNest was my first baby and I gave my heart and soul to help hundreds of artisan groups, cooperatives, microfianance groups around the globe.
One the entities that we helped was Trade Craft. We really nurtured them and worked with them closely. Well, Friday morning I met Rosalind, the daughter of the founders of the company. She told me how we worked with at a crucial point when they were turning their entity from an association to a for profit entity and how her parents remembers oneNest fondly. And, now she was coming to me to help her get her entity market ready and how she wants Trade Craft to list on IIX . We both were blown away with the gravity of the moment (she said she was getting goose bumps and I just wanted to cry...). At that moment I realized how my life's mission never changed -- it always was and always will be to bring social change/justice and sustainable development to this world. In a very small way perhaps I did do something for this world...I hope I can do much more.
Life indeed comes in a full circle.
Sharon Neo at IIX (a web search guru) found my speech online here it is --
http://www.fringer.org/wp-content/uploads/audio/GSVC-Durreen.WMA , http://fringer.org/?page_id=410.
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What an awesome and touching post. Thanks Durreen :) Best of luck to IIX and you! Not sure if you remember me -- I am Sarinee, one of the final round judges at GSVC SEA round in Bangkok. I talked to you briefly about IIX, said I know K. Watanan too, and said I wrote about it last year for Prachachat, a Thai business newspaper. A copy of my article is here if you are interested:
http://onopen.com/sarinee/09-10-08/5068
(I also said I'm a secret admirer of your blog. And BTW, the owner of that fringer.org blog where you found the speech file is me ;D)
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