Network Insights - Dec 13 2024

Weekly impact, news, and predictive insights from the world's largest social entrepreneur network.

Syria | Global – Amid upheaval in Syria this week, we’re commemorating ten years of the Syrian Archive, set up by Hadi al Khatib of Mnemonic – a global network that helps human rights defenders use digital documentation (e.g., smartphone videos of rights violations and international crimes shared via social media) to support accountability. The Syrian Archive now has over seven million digital records. Mnemonic has created four stand-alone archives: for Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, as well as Syria, adding over 13M digital records in 2023 alone. We spoke with Hadi as part of our Welcome Change series a few years ago, watch/listen here.

Europe | Egypt – As covered by Deutsche Welle (watch here), fishing families along the Mediterranean coast are playing new roles in clean-up efforts via plastic pulled up in their nets every day. From a five-generation fishing family in Greece, Lefteris Arapakis is expanding his work to Egypt (the source of some 40% of the plastic in the Mediterranean), helping fishermen see plastic as a secondary “catch." His organization pays for plastic brought to shore (not tossed back to sea, as before) and arranges on-shore recycling – in Greece, Italy, Spain, and now Egypt and Kenya.

A few more – The European Commission names Vienna as the Access City of 2025 – a designation celebrated as a milestone by Gregor Demblin and his organization myAbility; in the US, a new article in The Atlantic on rethinking what it means to be old cites Marc Freedman as a social entrepreneur shaping new options and mindsets for later life; and in Zimbabwe, Dixon Chibanda is expanding his Friendship Bench methodology (watch here) in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Child Care.