I was thrilled to recently join other social entrepreneurs speaking with a group of 63 Fulbright Scholars from 47 countries around the world. The US Department of State brought the Fulbright Enrichment Seminar participants to Washington to explore social entrepreneurship in the areas of environmental sustainability, public health, education, and economic/social equity. As part of this seminar, the Fulbright students met with Washington area social entrepreneurship experts who took part in an interactive panel discussion, which included First Book.
As a panel expert I was thrilled to share what First Book is doing in Washington D.C. and across the United States, but I was especially excited to join Shari Berenbach, President and CEO of the Calvert Social Investment Foundation (www.calvertfoundation.org) and Maya Ajmera, Founder and President of The Global Fund for Children (www.globalfundforchildren.org). This experience reminded me that the world of social enterprise truly is a small one — the First Book Marketplace received expansion funding from Calvert several years ago and we already offer a number of wonderful books from The Global Fund for Children.
Although the seminar was only for a few short hours, I spoke with amazing young people doing poverty work in Africa, women’s rights work in Asia, and innovative education work in Europe. I look forward to working more with both Shari and Maya and, who knows, perhaps one day even working with one or more of the Scholars I met to provide new books to children in need around the world…needless to say, I returned to First Book more excited than ever about what we do, working to inspire our world’s future generation of leaders every day.