Projects making a difference: OpenNorth, Recommerce Solutions

Starting a business is extremely hard, even more so when your goals are beyond pure profit. On a pure entrepreneurship level, you have to compete with the established companies, which have large amounts of resources to maintain their market lead and discourage any new entrants; you have to have excellent marketing to get attention in the market; plus at the same time, organize operations and the support functions of the business. That’s to be added to the community, social and environmental goals that you are trying to achieve as well. That’s why we want to give exposure today to two projects making a difference.

Open North is a Canada-based non-profit that aims to build online tools to make democracy better. They work and support the open data movement; and with clever ideas and smart implementation, show new ways to visualize data and act upon it. CitizenBudget, MaMairie.ca, and Resto-net are all successful projects that make a case for Open North. Now, they’re looking for support from SAJE. Vote for them in the Concours Québecois En Entrepreneuriat.

Next is a France-based sustainable project aims at finding solution for used cell phones. In our race for the latest Android and iPhone devices, a few keep their old Nokias in their drawers, others find out that you can’t just trash them since they have toxic materials: simply put, there is not an easy solution on how to handle old electronics. Recommerce Solutions, by Benoit Varin, takes back old phones and gives you back vouchers in more than 4500 stores in France. They’re on the “Challenge pour le développement durable”, please take a minute to vote for them!