Boston, Massachusetts
Maria Otero, President and CEO
www.accion.org
"We have taken traditional banking and turned it inside out," says Maria Otero, president and CEO of ACCION International. ACCION has pioneered microfinance--small loans used strategically to seed tiny businesses. Among its successes: Teresa, a Bolivian woman whom ACCION helped secure a loan for $100. Teresa started a business making bread using the mud oven in her one-room house. Six years and several loans later, Teresa has borrowed again--now for $2,800--to expand to five mud ovens and a backyard storefront. By forging partnerships with existing banks or creating new banks, ACCION helps lenders turn a profit while financing the most humble businesses. In three decades, it has distributed or enabled more than $5 billion in loans to more than 3 million people. And 97% have been paid back.
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Palo Alto, California
Jim Fruchterman, Chief Executive
www.benetech.org
"Our common belief is that information is powerful," says Jim Fruchterman. "And we try to put information tools into the hands of people who really need them." Fruchterman started Benetech in 2000 to focus on new ventures with a socially conscious bent. The result is an eclectic technology conglomerate catering to the disadvantaged. Among its newest projects is Martus, a software program that helps human-rights workers document abuses using encrypted technology. Bookshare.org allows the visually impaired to download and listen to 15,000 books in six languages. In the works: a program that will help teens with disabilities learn to read, land-mine detectors for civilians, and wireless devices for the disabled.
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North Haven, Connecticut
Larry Wood, Executive Director
Through its unique Learning Network, Benhaven has created a model program to put kids with autism in regular classrooms. Benhaven's staff works with teachers, parents, peers, and autistic kids themselves to design a vision for a child's life one year out, and to identify steps necessary to make that real. The team approach has allowed Benhaven to expand tenfold the number of clients it touches. That's part of what differentiates it from other mainstreaming efforts, say experts. For autistic adults, meanwhile, Benhaven's Real Lives employment program aims to make quality of life a target outcome--something the rest of the field has yet to embrace.
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Boston, Massachusetts
Eric Schwarz, President and Cofounder
www.citizenschools.org
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