The Background: Since 2010, Wash Cycle Laundry has established itself as one of the leaders in combining social entrepreneurship with green business, employing adults from vulnerable populations to work in their bicycle powered green laundry service. It earned “Best of Philly” in 2012 and the Sustainable Business Network‘s Visionary Entrepreneur Award in 2011, among other
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The Background: Alan, our near-neighbor of West Chester, PA, is founder and President of SosteNica. SosteNica provides multiple layers of support to Nicaraguan communities, starting with microcredit loans and reaching to hands-on initiatives in sustainable building and agriculture. Additionally, SosteNica is where our Charitable Remainder Trust is invested. For more background, visit our SosteNica page. Alan gave us
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What better way to set off on a new adventure than by bicycle? On Sunday, Wash Cycle Laundry began a two-day trip on their signature trikes down to Washington D.C., where Gabe and company launched the first expansion of their innovative Philly laundry business. Read all about it in the Technicl.ly Philly. And in other
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Elizabeth and I had a wonderful visit this week from Molly Hayward, founder of Cora. Molly is a passionate young entrepreneur from the Philadelphia area who really believes in changing how capitalism works. She calls Cora a “for-profit and for-purpose” social business. As Elizabeth remarked to Molly, “Hal will love you!” The service and mission
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Check out our post about Philly Compost on the Untours Blog, A Rind is a Terrible Thing to Waste. We explore the serious food waste problem in the United States and how Philly Compost is modeling a business to reduce food waste and our carbon footprint while enhancing our soils and gardens.
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Untours Foundation loan recipient Wash Cycle Laundry is included in a profile of the Merchants Fund, a venerable institution which has turned to a new strategy — providing small loans to Philadelphia’s small businesses. Wash Cycle Laundry received a loan to add motor-assist to some of the laundry-hauling tricycles which will enable WCL to expand
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This week, the first ten Fair Trade Schools in the United States were certified. No less than three of these schools are located in our hometown of Media, Pennsylvania! As a parent of three children at Media-Providence Friends School, and close with families at Media Elementary School, both newly certified schools, I (Shannon) have been
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As reported in the nifty new online magazine called Flying Kite, the City of Philadelphia is now working with social entrepreneurs and innovative businesses to help improve the city. The first project is called FastFWD, “an urban innovation refinery.” With $1 million from Bloomberg’s “Mayors Challenge”, FastFWD will initially tackle Public Safety collaboratively with entrepreneurs
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