NOLA Meetup Preview: Social Entrepreneurship and Minority-Owned Business Advocates Scheduled to Speak

NOLA MeetupWe’re getting back to the basics for tomorrow’s NOLA Meetup. We will be headed to Lucy’s again at 6:00 pm to feature two speakers who love the New Orleans tech and entrepreneurial community as much as we do. Andrea Chen, Executive Director of Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation, and Damon Burns, Co-founder of InNOLAvation, will be presenting about what their organizations do and why and how the larger community can get involved.

Chen highlights and supports social entrepreneurship in New Orleans. Propeller focuses on the social impact, financial sustainability, and scalability of the ventures they work with. The organization and the companies they support seek to solve social and environmental issues in the city.

Many of the companies and entrepreneurs Propeller works with are “green,” or environmentally friendly, businesses. Back in December, the nonprofit launched a space for over 100 social entrepreneurs called the Propeller Social Innovation Incubator. The space was designed to be a creative, inspirational, and collaborative space for the entrepreneurs, small businesses, and nonprofits.

With the same passion that fuels Chen’s support for social innovators, Burns supports minority-owned and run businesses and entrepreneurs in New Orleans. He, along with eight others, created InNOLAvation to facilitate innovation within the minority community. It began as a tech meetup back in October 2012 and has since grown into something greater.

InNOLAvation organizers were excited to announce the InNOLAvation Challenge, in partnership with Idea Village, which will hopefully become a many-year-long tradition for minority-owned businesses in the city. Three of those businesses received funding through the competition to grow their own businesses.

RSVP for tomorrow’s Meetup through Meetup.com/NOLAmeetup. See y’all there!

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We’d like to thank our April sponsor: Search Influence. Want to be a sponsor? Email Julia@SiliconBayouNews.com!