Leila Janah speaking at Tedx Silicon Valley

Tucked away in the upstairs of a quiet Thai restaurant, along a London backstreet, a number of Sandboxer’s got together this time last week to have dinner with Leila Janah.

As is usual at our dinners guests started discussions by introducing themselves, their biggest challenge and how they could potentially help others.

Leila is the founder of Samasource, a revolutionary social enterprise that aims to help marginalized people around the world. This is achieved through the concept of ‘micro work’. A few Sandboxer’s scrutinised the quality controls that can be put in place with crowd-sourcing models, but Leila impressively explained that Samasource is outsourcing the training and management of its people by franchising (a form of BPO), rather than simply crowd-sourcing.

Leila’s model may have been of particular interest to Michael Ambjorn (Director of Fellowship Networks at the RSA), who is currently developing a Social Enterprise Network, which highlights interesting social ventures around the world.

Examples of effective Social innovation at the bottom of the pyramid are hard to come by, but it was ever-inspiring to discuss each other’s latest social ventures. Out of this I suggest you take a look at “OneLeap” the latest venture of author, social entrepreneur, and Sandboxer Robyn Scott. She will also speak at the LSE’s inaugural BoP social entrepreneurship lecture on Valentine’s Day, given by our co-founder Christian Busch.

Brad Fitchew is community manager at Sandbox live!, constantly excited about the creative capacity of Sandboxers around the globe.

As many of you probably have already heard, we have started in addition to our monthly (and often even more frequent!) events in 25 cities across the globe organizing small and intimate dinners / breakfasts / lunches with 5 or 6 Sandboxers and one experienced leader. Whenever we work with senior people, we try to apply the same principles we also do for our own community: we carefully select people that truly inspire us, we love diversity and try to bring them from as many backgrounds as possible and we try to create a setting where people can build real relationships (vs. “networking) and eventually collaborate.

The discussions we had at past events for example when meeting with the Swiss Ambassador to the US, the Cambodian Secretary of State, a cofounder of the Feed Project, or experienced entrepreneurs like Lars Hinrichs (founder of XING), has really brought us to a new level.

In the next few weeks Sandboxers will have the pleasure to meet with Johannes Matyassy, Ambassador of Switzerland and Head of Präsens Schweiz, Hansueli Maerki, currently board member at ABB, SwissRe, former Chairman of IBM EMEA and member of our Advisory Board, Martin Naville, Chairman of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, David Bosshart, CEO of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, Thomas Held, CEO of Avenir Suisse and Nick Beglinger, Co-Founder and CEO of the Foundation For Global Sustainability.

Who else should we invite?