Grameen Bank is a microfinance bank that was started in 1983 in Bangladesh. Its made the dreams of many impoverished people come true by giving them the freedom to invest the way they want. It works on the principle of using social pressure/ peer-pressure to advocate repayment and smart investing strategies.

Muhammad Yunus started this bank on the basic principle of helping the less fortunate people of Bangladesh. What started out as a very simple and small business has grown into a rather large company. In 2006, the company netted about $20.3 Million. Although this is a sizable amount of profit, the goal of the company has not changed. Helping people can certainly be accomplished while making money. That way, both parties end out ahead.

In 2006, the company and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” (according to nobelprize.org)

With all the issues out there in America, why wouldn’t you want to do something to help better the general societal goals of the community? Being a Social Entrepreneur is one way to help people.

Being an entrepreneur is in and of itself a job. But a “social” entrepreneur differs from a “business” entrepreneur in that the main goal of a business entrepreneur is to make money. Plain and simple. Whereas a social entrepreneur’s main objective is to further environmental and social goals. The goals usually work to benefit large masses of people. Many things could possibly fall into the category of “Social Entrepreneurship” but the fact that vast numbers of people can be positively affected by one single idea or company.

But on the other hand, being a social entrepreneur doesn’t really need to be a large scale endeavor. It can also be a personal choice, where one person can take it upon himself to do something to benefit one or only a few other people.

A little known non-profit organization known as Butterfly Medical is doing just that… Providing Knowledge to the World.

What this organization is attempting to do is provide mainly developing and third world countries with free access to medical knowledge that could potentially save countless lives. So so many people die in developing countries from curable diseases not because they don’t have access to proper care, but because the care they are receiving is inadequate. Malpractice, for whatever reason, is extremely high in these less fortunate nations and by increasing the amount of information available to them, many people could be saved.

So how does Butterfly Medical plan to accomplish this? By simply having people, mostly volunteers, research diseases, medical conditions, and practices and then write articles about what they found. These articles would be made available in a database after their legitimacy could be confirmed. Also, these, as well as many currently existing articles would be translated so those in other countries could benefit from our American research. Many have referred to this idea as the Wikipedia of medical knowledge. And in some respects it is – people submit so others can read. But at the same time, there are many difference in the content, way in which the information is delivered, and much more.

Another aspect to this organization is providing a social networking portal for doctors, patients, students, etc. to interact about various things, mainly dealing with issues which are prevalent in developing countries.

I encourage you to investigate this more on your own and consider if you’d like to be apart of this phenomenal cause.

The issue of intellectual property can be a real problem amidst academic circles. People are actually very picky about who uses their ideas and how they do it. And rightfully so. But on the other hand, I know many individuals who believe in free or only slightly limited use of what they produce. For people like this, CreativeCommons.org was devised.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that allows an individual to relinquish some or all of the rights provided to them under the copyright act. They do this by issuing limited copyright licenses. We are very use to seeing the phrase “all rights reserved” printed onto things, but with creative commons, the phrase “some rights reserved” was coined from the fact that only some aspects of the information have restrictions placed on them.

Personally, I think Creative Commons is a good idea. For those people out there who wish to share their creative ideas with others, this provides a great portal for those people to do just that.

There are countless websites out there that allow the common individual to buy and sell stocks. However, in my experience, Ameritrade.com is unequivocally the best out there. There are tons of features for both the novice trader as well as the experienced stock broker. With inexpensive transaction rates of $9.99, it is also a very affordable service considering its security. Ameritrade is also a very stable company grossing over $2.7 Billion in 2008.

If you have an interest in the stock market and an interest in making money without leaving your desk, I suggest Ameritrade as easy platform to get started and as you gain investment knowledge and stock market savy, you can sit back and watch your few well placed investments grow and grow.