The Soma filter.

This summer I met Mike del Ponte, founder of Soma glass water filters, just months before the product was set to launch. 

picture via Wired

The Soma is an updated Brita: more stylish, more eco (filters are made from coconut shells), more convenient (said filters are mailed to you every 60 days once you sign up). Plus, for every filter you buy, they donate to partners charity:water and help provide clean water to people who need it most.

I got to be an early adopter and a Soma VIP, and received my filter in their first round of shipments. Unfortunately, it came and it was busted: the filter had shaken loose and had emptied into its inner packaging. But the Soma team was quick to respond on email, and sent me a replacement filter within a week.

About a month or so ago Soma mailed its VIPs a second filter to give away. Which I did, this Thanksgiving weekend, as part of a white-elephant style gift exchange. It was a hit, and got "stolen" from its first owner during the course of the game.

The new owner is a social worker with developmentally-challenged students in Connecticut. Her niece loved the box, too.

Soma is not only making something practical and utilitarian more sexy and cool--it's making it better (you know that thing that happens when you refill your Brita and pour it too soon, and the lid comes undone and water goes everywhere? That won't happen). I'd rather spend a little more and know I'm getting something that works well, looks great during a dinner party or everyday, and will last.

Soma has been warmly received with great press this fall and was featured in a few key gift guides: I'm sure they'll sell quite a few this holiday season. They've also raised nearly $5M in seed funding. 

Cheers, Soma! 

7 Train Sessions: New Website Up!

Long live live music.

Since March of 2010, my friend and co-conspirator James and I have curated and produced the 7 Train Sessions, a guerilla-style concert series in living rooms, rooftops, and moving subway trains in Queens. In doing so, we've brought together a community of musicians and music-lovers around shared experiences: intimate, unique performances of original music.

Last week, we re-launched our website, with an archive of the 100+ performers we've booked over the years, as well as some select photos and videos of past performances.

Check out the new site here.

          

photos by Amy Sly. 

At the end of September, New York was busy thinking and talking about social progress and impact: Mashable's Social Good Summit led to the Clinton Global Initiative, which overlapped with the United Nations General Assembly meeting, all in one week. 

Of many big announcements made at the Clinton Global Initiative (including my own organization's social enterprise salon project to fight sex trafficking and empower survivors, in partnership with The Estee Lauder Companies--read the announcement on Reuters here), one new company stood out: Tau Investment Management, an investment company setting out to "orchestrate and implement capitalist solutions to capitalist failures." In short, they're planning to clean up global supply chains and prove the profitability of responsible practices in the process.

Oliver Niedermaier, Founder and CEO of Tau Investment Management, announced Tau's first commitment: to raise and deploy $1 billion toward supply chain turnarounds, starting within the global garment industry. The process will include overcoming inefficiencies, environmental degradation, and of course labor issues, made strikingly apparent in the past year with the catastrophe in Bangladesh.

Rather than steer clear from unsustainable, irresponsible suppliers and hope the public learns enough of the details to follow suit, Tau will intentionally target these companies, and apply enough capital and expertise to turn them into candidates worthy of use by leading companies and brands. Purpose may not always be more profitable in the short term, but right now we can't afford not to think longer and larger about our impact.

Read more on their website and watch their CGI announcement here.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: But Will It Be Streamed?

Whether or not you believe Russell Brand will lead the revolution, his interview with the BBC this week was captivating. He doesn't vote--not out of apathy, but out of indifference, and a desire to reject a system that does not serve the majority of its people. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, nor can he describe the path to a utopian society that would serve all people. But his point was simple: I know the questions we must be asking, and the problems we must be addressing, and we're nearing a serious breaking point by continuing to sail along in the status quo.

A few highlights:

He critiques the "I say profit is (a dirty word), because wherever there is profit there is deficit."

He calls out "cozy little valves" of recycling, Prius' ..." for making people think they're solving the problem, while dangerously ignoring the looming and consistent changes in our climate and environment.

He also makes the good point that "the Occupy Movement made a difference, even if only in that it introduced to the public lexicon the idea of the 1% - people for the first time in a generation are aware of massive corporate and economic exploitation. These things are not nonsense, and these subjects are not being addressed."

For a few reasons Russell Brand may not be the ideal candidate for our next leader (some have pointed to examples of misogyny and the ironic tie to profitability when someone like Brand becomes buzzworthy). But whether he's the perfect spokesperson, or has fully-formed solutions at the ready, his "not-dumb" assessments of the situation that, in some dark ways, are becoming comically out of whack, are worthy.

Watch the 11-minute interview below.  

 

Braking the Cycle

As if we needed another reason to love food trucks, there's now an organization in New York City called Drive Change, which is taking the benefit of your corner sandwich source to the next level. Drive Change builds and operates state-of-the-art, locally sourced food trucks that hire and train formerly incarcerated youth. Their business model is set up as a social enterprise, and all sales feed back into the organization to cover re-entry costs for these young people as they transition out of jail or prison. The founder's teaching experience on Riker's Island showed her firsthand the challenges faced by New York's youth, over and over: 66% of youth offenders return to prison within a year of release.

The impact? They pledge to lower the recidivism rate for young people in their program who are treated as adults in the criminal justice system from 70% to 20%.

 View their video and help their current fundraising campaign below.

 

Travel+SocialGood

Yesterday I joined in the inagural Travel+SocialGood Summit, part of the +SocialGood initiative headed by the UN Foundation, UNDP, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Case Foundation & Mashable. The conference took a broad look at places where travel, technology, and social good collide, and where there's an opportunity for scalable positive impact.

My breakout session on women and gender lens in this nexus of social good turned into a more general (interesting) discussion on women in politics and positions of power, women as heads of family (and how they spend their money, as opposed to men of the family) and the female tendency toward careers and roles that are social, connected, and people-centric (ok, that was me, reading from Dr. Louann Brizendine's The Female Brain).

Favorite takeaway: Mamahope's Stop the Pity: Unlock the Potential
Campaign, video below. I might've teared up, just a little (again, see Dr. Brizendine's book for reasons...). Sometimes solutions to issues and challenges are complicated, but they can be simple too. We're so much more informed and ultimately connected, thanks to technology, and a little pre-vacation research could go a long way.  

What Women Want (and need)

Another recent favorite: product-first and female-friendly THINX has created a line of leak-proof, stain-proof female underwear. For every pair purchased, they donate a percentage to partner organization AFRIpads, whose local team manufactures seven more reusable cloth pads for women and girls who need them.

An estimated 67 million women and girls in the developing world don't have proper supplies to take care of their period. As a result, they miss school, suffer infections and complications, and deal with stigma and embarrassment. Many get so far behind in school that they're forced to drop out.

So as much as it can be a drag for us to toss that favorite pair of underwear, the consequences don't even compare. Great thinking, ladies.

photo via thinx