In selecting the winner of our second Idea Challenge (congratulations again to Nadia Bini of Montreal!), Challenge Your World was forced to revisit the question of how the “people” and “profit” elements of sustainability interact with one another. And for good reason — 8 of the Top 10 ideas in our recent Challenge were concepts for social enterprises. By now, we’re all very familiar with the lexicon of sustainability — the “triple bottom line”, and the “3Ps: People, Planet and Profit”. When looked at separately, the social, environmental and economic components have fairly specific definitions. But when it comes to tightly integrating the social [...]

Challenge Your World is pleased to announce that Nadia Bini’s idea BIMAM: Banque interactive MAM was selected as the winner of our second Idea Challenge. Nadia will receive a $ 5000 USD incentive and 3 months of support and services to further develop her idea. For 3 months, the Challenge Your World community voted for their Top 10 favourite ideas. These ten IdeaMakers then had one week to submit additional information about their project, from which our judging panel picked the winning idea. The judges use an Idea Scorecard to evaluate and select the winner. This Idea Scorecard has weighted criteria in the fields of Opportunity, Sustainability and [...]

Next Monday, February 15th, we’ll announce the Top IdeaMaker from our January 2010 Challenge. With that in mind, I thought it would be appropriate to provide an update on the Top IdeaMakers from our very first challenge in November 2009. To give you a quick summary, a Challenge Your World judging panel selects the Top IdeaMaker from the Top 10 Ideas as voted by the community. We provide the Top IdeaMaker with a $5000 USD development incentive and three months of direct support and services to advance the development of their idea. Challenge Your World provides the remaining Top 10 with direct support to assess the potential of their idea, so the [...]

Here are the Top 10 ideas, as voted by the Challenge Your World community. The winning idea will be selected by our Judging Panel and announced on February 15th. Best of luck to the Top 10 candidates! For more information about the Idea Challenge, click here. OpenAction: Your Actions. Open to the World by OpenAction Shop Pal by Preethi Narayan Matribu.biz by Chantal Dauray and Annie Hébert BIMAM: Banque interactive MAM by Nadia Bini Projet OASIS by Matthew Trowell Un sou à la fois! - 1 penny for kids! by 1sou Kuuala: Where Green Feels Better. by Mikael Cho Fancy and Delicious Baking Company by Maura Pellettieri Gardens in Every School by [...]

Voici les Top 10 idées, telles que voté par la communauté Challenge Your World. L'idée gagnante sera sélectionnée par notre Jury et annoncée le 15 février. Pour de plus amples renseignements sur ce Défi idée, cliquez ici. Bonne chance aux 10 candidats ! OpenAction: Your Actions. Open to the World par OpenAction Shop Pal par Preethi Narayan Matribu.biz par Chantal Dauray et Annie Hébert BIMAM: Banque interactive MAM par Nadia Bini Projet OASIS par Matthew Trowell Un sou à la fois! - 1 penny for kids! par 1sou Kuuala: Where Green Feels Better. par Mikael Cho Fancy and Delicious Baking Company par Maura Pellettieri Gardens in Every School par [...]

This Saturday in Montreal SIFE Concordia is hosting Venture Medium, an open event showcasing the community of varied and innovative Montreal entrepreneurs. This day long conference will be split into 3 distinct topics covering: Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Finance (including two workshops given by Challenge Your World!).

Visit http://www.sifeconcordia.com for details and to register.

The National Film Board has been telling stories that reflect Canada back to Canadians for seven decades now. With "GDP - Measuring the human side of the Canadian economic crisis", the NFB is running the country’s first bilingual web documentary, a pan-Canadian project that bears witness to the far-reaching effects of the crisis in our lives and communities. Challenge Your World is collaborating with the GDP webdoc for the duration of the GDP production (planned until end of August 2010) in order to document and show how entrepreneurs reinvent themselves. For more information about the GDP webdoc and to view a sample of their videos, visit our NFB [...]

L'Office national du film du Canada s'est engagé dans une aventure multimédia inédite et exaltante en mettant en œuvre dès la fin septembre 2009 « PIB - L'indice humain de la crise économique canadienne », un tout premier documentaire web pancanadien bilingue, qui témoigne des effets à long terme de la crise sur la vie des Canadiens et des Canadiennes. Challenge Your World collabore avec le docu web PIB pour la durée de l’expérience PIB (prévue jusqu’à la fin août 2010) dans le but de documenter et montrer comment des entrepreneurs se réinventent. Pour en savoir plus sur le docu web PIB et pour visionner des exemples de leurs vidéos, visitez notre [...]

Take our survey! Help us better understand our community and your needs!  Your opinion means a lot to us. We value your opinion and always enjoying receiving comments and feedback from you. Our first Rendez-Vous 09 event was a great success, and the first Idea Challenge brought very bright ideas (check out our top 3). We want to build on this success and plan to improve the site in 2010. We will  keep you in the loop. Stay tuned! [...]

Empowering traditional artisans to manufacture eco-friendly products has long been a dream for Shilpa Muralidharan. She’s now poised to make it a reality.

Shilpa’s plan is simple: she aims to provide textile producers in rural communities basic resources to tweak their ancient production techniques – which are already eco-friendly for the most part – so they can be certified under the Organic Exchange.

Minor shift, major impact

With the Organic Exchange certification, artisans can form co-operatives, and Shilpa can help sell their products to a growing network of eco-friendly retail outlets in developed nations. It’s a minor shift that [...]