Recently at the third annual Clinton Global Initiative University, national universities and national organizations made commitments worth $42 million to challenges such as climate change, poverty, human rights, education, health care, and the environment. Among these commitments was a gift by the President of Babson College, Leonard Schlesinger with an estimated value of $18 million in the form of the Babson Global Entrepreneurship Education Network.

 By dramatically building on the foundation of their highly successful Price-Babson Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE), which has demonstrated our unique capabilities to “teach the teachers,” the Babson Global Entrepreneurship Education Network (GEEN) will build a global community of Babson trained educators that will deliver their unique and highly successful brand of educating new and emerging leaders around the world. Specific initiatives within this commitment include organizing a symposium at the beginning of the clinical-residential year where educators would spend time at Babson (learning to teach) or in an entrepreneurial environment (learning the practical side) or a combination of both; the localization of their materials to meet the relevent needs of communities, businesses, and governments around the world; the creation of a state-of-the-art virtual web-center for GEEN – this would allow on-line education and classes, blogging, dissemination of best practices, and professional network support; thus resulting in greater outreach; and a certification program that will “license” their approach to influential educators who will disseminate knowledge on a global and unprecedented scale. They envision this prorgam being one that can be replicated by other institutions. Finally they will continue their work with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, resulting from the release of the first ever Babson Entrepreneurship Monitor (BEM) for the State. The collaboration modeled there demonstrated the first time that this methodology, designed to measure entrepreneurial activity, has been applied at the state level everywhere in the United States.

GBSN, meanwhile, has partnered with CGI University and Global Giving to help enable student social entrepreneurs to raise funds for their work using GlobalGiving. The organizations will provide a financial and social media platform for student social entrepreneurs to post their projects and to raise funds. Furthermore, GBSN and GlobalGiving will provide training, financial incentives, and technical support as well as work with groups of students to evaluate each other’s work and the work of other social entrepreneurs raising funds on the GlobalGiving web site.