Another world is possible and is already happening. Hub Oaxaca is a local initiative inspired by a need for support and coordination services for social innovators with projects in southern Mexico. It merges local knowledge and practice in a community center, with a direct link to an international network of “Hubs,” working for social change in over 24 cities around the world. Hub Oaxaca’s mission is to improve well being through innovation and sustainability in an open exchange between individuals and communities--traditional and emerging--in the Oaxaca region.

It is estimated that about 70% of the total population of India live in rural areas, distributed in approximately 638,000 villages. However, about 75% of the poor are in rural areas, with nearly 30% living under the situation of chronic poverty. A major cause for rural poverty in India is the lack to productive assets and financial resources. Halloran Philanthropies and Drishtee Foundation envision sustainable rural communities that are able to generate and maintain the resources necessary to increase their level of well being and happiness without depleting economic, social & environmental values.

Our approach seeks to establish a supportive relationship with local entrepreneurs to provide them with the Capacity, Credit and Channel that will enable the development of Increased Livelihood, Better Services and Comprehensive Infrastructure in the Village. We are currently working on the development of Community Innovation Center along with a Rural Micro-enterpise Incubator that will serve as the platform to advocate, demonstrate and implement innovative solutions to the community.

Pro Mujer is an international women’s development and microfinance organization whose mission is to provide Latin America’s poor women with the means to build livelihoods for themselves and futures for their families through microfinance, business training, and healthcare support.

In 2007, Halloran supported the development of the Human Resources Initiative, which envisioned key personel appointments, standard formula to measure staff turnover, coaching and mentoring and an online management training program in order to support the organizational growth in the five countries where Pro Mujer works. Currently, we are supporting the expansion of Pro Mujer in Mexico. The new branch in the states of Oaxaca is expected to have an impact on 800 women and 4,000 families for the next two years.

ANDE is a Brazilian microfinance institution committed to improving the quality of life of underprivileged Brazilian families by facilitating social and economic development through microfinance services and business development training. Halloran Philanthropies supported the development of an online fundraising platform to expand and stimulate the practice of social lending in Brazil, creating a peer-to-peer connection, similar to KIVA. With access to more loan capital, ANDE expects to double the outreach during the next 5 years, going from 25,000 to 50,000 borrowers.

Kiva lets social investors loan money to small businesses in the developing world through their website. Throughout the term of the loan (usually 6–12 months), social investors receive e-mail journal updates about the business owners. As loans are repaid, the lenders receive their money back. Kiva helps smaller microfinance organizations gain access to low-cost capital. Increased media coverage about KIVA has created a situation where Kiva’s ability to raise funds through their lending community has outpaced the capacity of their microfinance partners to absorb the available debt capital. Halloran Philanthropies supported Kiva to create the infrastructure necessary to assist the microfinance institutions by hiring the onsite staff in Africa, Asia and Latin America to coordinate multiple branches, maintain first world accounting procedures, and to measure social impact. We also supported the development of new software that supported a group-lending infrastructure.

The Grameen Foundation is an international Microfinance Network founded in 1997 and inspired by the work of the Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh. Grameen Foundation’s global network of 57 microfinance partners reaches over 4 million families in 25 countries. Grameen Foundation leverages the microfinance infrastructure by providing financial services, technical assistance, and technology. The Grameen Foundation began supporting the Chinese microfinance sector in 2000. The strategy in China is to increase the outreach of microfinance institutions and to foster support in the rural provinces. Halloran Philanthropies has provided funding for training, technical assistance, MIS support and other capacity building services to improve operations and expand the rural outreach of three microfinance organizations in rural China.

The Enterprise Center provides access to capital, building capacity, business education, and economic development opportunities to assist minority entrepreneurs compete more effectively in the market place. Through various business initiatives, The Enterprise Center supports minority businesses. Halloran Philanthropies' funding for The Enterprise Center’s Business Education Unit offered entrepreneurial training to support the expansion of two key successful programs; the Youth + Entrepreneurship = Success (YES) Program, which targets high school students through in-school, after-school, and summer opportunities; and Project Great Potential (PGP), which targets young minority males between the ages of 18 and 25.

The mission of Project H.O.M.E. is to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness by addressing its root causes through affordable housing, economic development and environmental improvement programs, as well as providing access to employment opportunities, adult and youth for the revitalization work education and health care. Halloran has provided funding for economic development in the Ridge Avenue commercial corridor in North Philadelphia, an area that has suffered from years of economic neglect.

FINCA International provides financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living. They target the poorest of the working poor: those who have the least access to services such as loans, savings programs, and insurance. Halloran has supported the start-up of 10 Finca's village banks in Haiti, Guatemala and Mexico through a grant provided to the Main Line Unitarian Church (MLUC). MLUC is a liberal religious congregation that lives its values by striving to make a better world through social actions. Hence, MLUC has created a Task Force committed to social investment in Latin America through microfinance for the past ten years. In addition, the Task Force plays a strong advocacy role in raising awareness around the key social issues that impact the lives of our Latin American neighbors.

Buckminster Fuller's prolific life of exploration, discovery, invention and teaching was driven by his intention “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.” Through his “comprehensive anticipatory design science”, Fuller combined an emphasis on individual initiative and integrity with whole systems thinking, scientific rigor and faithful reliance on nature's underlying principles. Fuller issued an urgent call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all.

Winning the Buckminster Fuller Challenge requires more than a great stand-alone innovation, it is essential that it be part of a comprehensive solutions that radically advance human well-being and ecosystem health.

While historically the movement of microfinance has been largely credit-led, focused on providing only business enterprise loans, there is a high demand and very limited access among the poor to asset-building products, such as savings and insurance that are critical to achieving long-term poverty alleviation. It is estimated that only three percent of the low-income people in the world’s 100 poorest countries have a microinsurance product, leaving approximately two billion people unserved. Healthcare exerts the most financial pressure on poor families.

In April 2010, Women’s World Banking with the support of Halloran Philanthropies, helped its network member Microfund for Women in Jordan launch The Caregiver Policy, an insurance product that helps women cope with the financial burdens associated with a medical emergency, providing coverage for any incidental expenses incurred as a result of hospitalisation, including childbirth.

Rural India is affected by a chronic power shortage, with about 400 million Indian lacking access to electricity. Only 40% of rural population with access to energy. Kerosene remains one of the main sources of energy with families, especially women, spending an average of 13 hours per week fetching wood for fire. Lack of sustainable sources of power have huge implications in the productivity of agriculture and labor as well as reliable delivery of education, health and communication services. SELCO Labs is the innovation and incubation arm of SELCO Solar, a social enterprise that provides sustainable energy solutions and services to under-served households and businesses in rural India. The lab was setup in 2009 to develop new clean and sustainable technologies for the rural poor other than lighting. The lab is hosted inside the premises of SDM Institute of Technology, Ujire, Karnataka. The rural setting gives the lab access to local customers, instant feedback, and visibility into available resources and constraints.

There is a demand for clean and affordable energy in developing countries and this demand can be satisfied by local entrepreneurs. With 15 years of experience and offices in 8 locations, E+Co's innovative business model provides lasting solutions to climate change and poverty. E+Co makes debt and equity clean energy investments as well as carbon financing in developing countries. The investments range from approximately US$25,000 to US$1,000,000 in addition to tools and business know-how to help those businesses thrive. Halloran has provided growth capital to E+CO.

The Ashden Indian Collective is a response to the need that India has to develop renewable based low carbon strategy to build a sustainable energy future. The Collective is working towards creating complete synergy between the Ashden Awards winners so that they may speak with one voice to policy makers and financial institutions with the aim facilitating ways in which government, donors, business and investors and work together to scale up the use of renewable energy. The Collective is fortunate in that the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy have asked them to have an input into their next five-year plan, initially on a kerosene elimination program. They will also be participating in other events, and developing partnerships with other organizations.

The Technion attracts the best and brightest students, and provides a combination of rigorous training and inspiration that produces the innovative thinking that powers the start-ups and high-tech industries that drive economies. The Technion is one of only a small handful of science and technology universities in the world with its own medical school. This is significant because medicine is becoming increasingly dependent on powerful instruments for diagnosis and treatment, making biotechnology a leading 21st century field. The Technion Engineers Without Borders Program has contributed innovation to help provide sustainable energy and improve sanitary conditions in Namsaling, Nepal by designing and developing a biodigester that will collect human waste and animal dung to generate energy for cooking and heating in addition to the creation of fertilizer for agriculture.