Josephine: economic agency through cooking!

Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Josephine is a community based platform for home cooks to sell their specialty cuisine to their neighbors, who order and pay online and then pick up in person. Its ambitious mission addresses three identified needs with a view to catalyzing sustainable growth economies within neighborhoods: (Labor) providing retirees, stay-at-home parents, immigrants and historically underemployed groups with dignified, profitable and self-sufficient work; (Food Justice) cooks turn cultural and family know-how into a vehicle for a living wage while providing cross-cultural food exchange, community bonding and uplift with a nutritional value-add; and (Tech Equity) technology becomes more inclusive through food, as vetted cooks who may not normally have access to or be comfortable with computers/smartphones are trained to manage, maintain and grow their businesses via the platform. #NeedEconomy

Cross Dakar City: gaming to highlight child poverty

Can an app inspire impact investors, industry leaders and policy wonks to champion sustainable solutions to cyclical child poverty? This entry into activist gaming is brought to the world by Senegalese engineer, Ousseynou Khadim Bèye. The app, compatible with most devices, highlights the perils of life as lived by a Talibé child who, often exploited, must beg for money. The objective of the game is to get him safely to his parents while surmounting a number of obstacles in the city of Dakar, Senegal. #NeedEconomy

Livestock Wealth: the stock market for Cows!

Founded in 2014, Livestock Wealth is the first of its kind crowdfarming platform that allows anyone, world-wide, to become a farmer by investing in a cow and earn income from the sale of its offspring. Investors can use the website and/or a mobile app to track, manage and name their cow(s). A true disruption of what it means to invest on a global exchange and in agriculture, Livestock Wealth  at once provides investment opportunities to a local population with traditional and cultural ties to the land by using a commodity they understand and value, while challenging global investors’ notion that stocks are the only thing worth exchanging for profit across borders. The platform promises positive social and environmental impact with profits for all at every step of the value and supply chain. #NeedEconomy