WORTH Wins Vision Award

On November 2, 2008 Marcia Odell, Director and prime mover and shaker of Pact’s WORTH Program, received one of four prestigious Vision Awards from Mohammad Yunus, CEO of Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.  The award was established by the Berlin-based Genisis Institute for Social Business and Impact Strategies, a “think-and-do-tank”, founded by Dr. Yunus and former German federal ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Heiner Geissler, which studies and promotes the social business concept. 

The Vision Summit 2008 was attended by 50 speakers and over 800 participants, and carried the theme “Social Business – Just Try It”.  Other award winners include Celso Grecco, the creator of the Social Stock Market as part of BOVESPO, the conventional stock market in Sao Paolo, Brazil; Roberto Baggio Barreto, Executive Director of the Committee for the Democratization of Information Technology and an Ashoka Fellow; and Dieter Reitmeyer, founder and CEO or redi-Group and head of the Reitmeyer Foundation.

Panel discussions were held over a two-day period to facilitate an international exchange of ideas about approaches and perspectives, as well as successful programs such as WORTH.  Dr. Yunus has been a prime mover of the social business model, which includes positive social objectives, plowing profits back into the business or community, and community ownership.  These of course are all strong aspects of the WORTH model, now in its tenth year.

The Summit organizers praised the WORTH program as “just as successful and phenomenal as the history of Yunus’ Grameen Bank and its small loans.”  Marcia Odell gave a stirring speech of thanks in which she emphasized WORTH’s strength as a women’s’ empowerment program, where poor women learn the skills and assurance to turn their initiatives into valuable, independent contributors to their own communities.