We will be presenting at The Pitch Pub, an event organized by a team from a various chambers of commerce in the Boston/Cambridge region. These events are focused on entrepreneurship and innovation. They take place in a casual and laid-back setting, usually a pub (hence the name). It is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to discuss their business with a high-quality business network and receive valuable feedback. Each event revolves around a specific topic, and this time it is entitled -

“Social Entrepreneurship – how to mitigate business risks when reaching out to marginalized communities.”

And dare we say that we know something about the business risks in reaching out to marginalized communities (event though we are just a 5-month young organization).

So, if you are in the Cambridge area on the 24th of September, come check us out. The event flyer has more information on location and time. The flyer can be found here – http://tiny.cc/Flyer_Sep24

Early registration is always recommended to avoid the $10 that get charged at the door. From what I hear, this event has attracted good interest among the local community and we are expecting a sizable crowd.

An interesting trivia – Supporters of the Pitch Pub includes the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, which incidentally, organizes the annual Boston Cleantech Venture Day.

For more details, visit the Pitch Pub site – http://pitchpub.com/

Alternatively, you can follow their tweets here – http://twitter.com/PitchPub

Each time I talk about Karma Bazaar, people ask – “so, would you support logistics for goods made in Africa?”

Poverty is a global issue – prominent and visible in developing and under-developed economies. But so is it in our own neighborhoods, communities and townships. It was frustrating to see that people sometimes don’t see problems that is so close to their homes. I have always felt that this issue existed closer to home, but I never had authoritative facts to support my argument. So I set out do some research in this matter, partly to get to know the facts and largely to have some numbers in my repertoire to counter the “international shipping conundrum”.

According to United Way (http://liveunited.org/income/index.cfm) as many as one-third of working Americans do not earn enough money to even meet their basic needs. They cannot save enough for retirement, nor can they buy a home. Financial instability is a far greater problem than we had imagined in our own backyard!

Part of the problem seems to reside in the fact that wages are not keeping up with inflation (with current economic conditions only making things worse). Some families continue to live under the federal poverty line despite having to work at more than one job in a given day.

“12% of the U.S. population has an income below the federal poverty level”

According to the 2009 Federal Poverty Guidelines (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml), which is sometimes referred to as “federal poverty level” is set at an annual family income of $10,830 for a family of 1. That is about $900 a month. Which is about $30 a day.

So why do we think that poverty is a problem that lies elsewhere?

So, long story short, we tried writing the “About Us” page a number of times. But as it turns out, the best way to do this is to let others write it for you! Here’s how it works – You take an idea and talk about it to as many people as you can. You really don’t have much to lose since the idea itself is in it inception stage and you (probably) don’t have much invested in yet, except for some mindshare. To help you make sure the idea is articualted right, maybe you put together a slide deck. Nothing fancy – just a few slides describing your story. And someone, somewhere will pick it up and write about it!

Why am I so sure that this will work? Well… it worked for Karma Bazaar. Check our “About Us” page written by our friend Kai Rostcheck – http://www.kairostcheck.com/case-studies/karmabazaar/

We couldn’t have articulated it better ourselves – thank you Kai.

And while you are at it – we recommend that you check out his “Idea of the Day” section. Who knows… you may find your next nugget of inspiration there!

Untill then… buy responsibly!

_KB

This is supposed to be a “hello world” post, so – “Hello World”.

Our immediate purpose for this blog is to keep folks informed about what we are up to, while we build our site – www.karmabazaar.com

Till then… buy responsibly!

_KB