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Originally published Monday, March 9, 2009 at 3:30 PM

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Editorial

UW Global Business Center rewards social entrepreneurship

We salute the Foster School's Global Business Center, which acknowledges and rewards social entrepreneurship — business with a social goal.

Seattle Times editorial

Information

For results of the fifth annual global social entrepreneurship competition, go to:

http://www.scantv.org/index.php?option=com_content&id=337

A BUSINESS plan to sell meals for less than 10 cents each to the poor of Mumbai, the city shown in the Oscar-winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire" — that's worth a prize.

University of Washington's Foster School of Business has awarded a prize for just such a plan at a ceremony in Seattle last week. It was $10,000, donated by Microsoft.

The winners, four students from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in India, designed an 800-calorie, ready-to-eat meal using rice, lentils, unrefined sugar and vegetables, including vegetable peels that food processors have been throwing away. The meal could be sold profitably for 5 rupees — 9.6 U.S. cents — a lifesaving bargain.

Another prizewinning plan aimed to defeat counterfeit pharmaceuticals — some of them worthless and even dangerous — through the use of code numbers on sealed pill bottles, cellphone texting and a central computer registry. The team, from Princeton University and Ghana, West Africa, calculated that the labels and verification service would cost 6 cents per bottle of pills — an investment in counterfeit suppression that would pay handsomely for the producers of legitimate drugs.

These and other business plans are examples of social entrepreneurship — business with a social goal. We salute the winners and the Foster School's Global Business Center for holding the annual competition, which has the potential of doing so much good.

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

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Comments (5)
I served as a judge for the 2009 GSEC. I think this is a great event and I hope the Seattle business community will broaden its support. Aaron ...  Posted on March 10, 2009 at 9:04 AM by Aaron Rose. Jump to comment
We must remember that all not businesspeople are like the greedy bankers who were giving those bad mortgages away to anyone and everyone. I...  Posted on March 10, 2009 at 9:30 PM by rbprintr. Jump to comment
For interviews with the winning teams, check out Scan TV's coverage. Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times interviews the students. Very...  Posted on March 19, 2009 at 1:00 PM by globalgirl. Jump to comment


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