(Picture from Newsweek)

The latest Newsweek profiles 15 people who make America great, including two under-25 social entrepreneurs, Benita Singh and Ruth Degolia, founders of Mercado Global, a nonprofit group that works in Latin America with communities to help market their goods. Sounds a lot like World of Good, without the Whole Foods kiosks (yet).

So the two young women filled their suitcases with beaded bags and necklaces and took them back to Yale that fall, where they quickly sold out at a 300 percent markup. By Christmas they were back in Guatemala, laying the groundwork for a nonprofit they named Mercado ("market") Global, which seeks to bring the benefits of globalization to poor communities that until now have seen only the downside, in the collapse of prices for their locally grown crops. With a start-up grant from Echoing Green, a "social entrepreneurship" foundation, Singh and DeGolia organized 15 to 18 cooperatives in villages so remote that many inhabitants don't even speak Spanish, let alone English. The members produce textiles on backstrap looms, hand-painted ceramics and jewelry for the export market. They grossed about $75,000 last year in retail, online and catalog sales; this year, their second, Singh and DeGolia project sales of $600,000, and they are in talks with a major chain about carrying their hand-painted coffee mugs. The money will be used to fund scholarships for children whose parents could not afford the $50 or $60 it costs to send a child to elementary school in rural Guatemala. This year they're sending a computer to each of the cooperatives so the women can keep their books (although only a few can read or write). "We have a very special place in our heart," says Lara Galinsky, a vice president of Echoing Green, "for young people with the audacity, the vision and the energy to see things through." Even in places like San Alfonso.

Also featured in the new issue is Pierre Omidyar and many others (though not sure I agree with a few of them).

Around the horn in other news ...

*Bob Geldof says EU must get serious about illegal migration.

*A quarterly style magazine that mixes environmental focus and lifestyle called Lunch to launch.

*New York Social Enterprise Alliance runs forum to help nonprofits gain greater financial independence.

*Retire the socially responsible way, from CSRWire.

*UK social enterprise helps turn dropouts into productive citizens. In Kentucky, teen moms turn into entrepreneurs with the New Leaf Project.

*Hillary Benn, Secretary of State for the Department for International Development in Britain, was put on the spot at a meeting of the Civicus world assembly.

*The UK's Department of Health has started a social enterprise unit to tap into ideas and networks of the evolving world of social entrepreneurship. Nurses especially back these ideas.

*Please remember to check in with Clare at Exceptional Lives as she travels the globe looking at social enterprise and social entrepreneurial projects. Right now she's near the Congolese border, and from the last I heard from her, the next stops on her trip will be back to Kenya and then on to Tanzania.

*Turning trash into fashion, at OrigonNews (in pdf).

*On nonprofit tools in a nonprofit context, at the Innovation Funders Network.

*High tech, high touch at Sonnie's Porch.