"It's a year since financial education became a compulsory part of the curriculum for England's 11 to 16 year olds. But do you know the answers to some of the questions in their lessons?"

Wind power is reported to have generated enough energy to supply 1.9 million homes in Scotland or 35.9% (April 2016). This is great news for those in favour of new ecological and sustainable power supplies. Together with solar power, ecologically generated power is really starting to make a dent on overall supplies, contrary to those who have been sceptical in the past. 

This was also one of those are unusually positive weeks in the climate change area and sometimes those ‘good weeks’ are few and far between. However the Paris deal was signed by the key players in New York and climate change moved to centre stage in the Australian federal election also. The historic agreement on climate change marked a major milestone with a record 175 countries signing on to it on the opening day. But world leaders made clear more action is needed, and quickly, to fight the relentless rise in global temperatures.

Follow, discuss and help keep up the momentum on Finance Eco Money See also https://www.finance-eco-money.org/fempower/crowdfunding/item/empowering-and-financing-solar-powered-desalination 

Social entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly important all over the world. The main difference between what we generally call an enterprise and a social enterprise is in that the majority of companies measure their success through earned and retained profits, whereas social enterprises measure their success in the quantity of people they have helped and the extent, to which they made this world a better place to live in for all the members of society. Social enterprises usually apply their profits either to their own growth and promotion, or to the promotion and the development of the entire community.

                Some contributions social entrepreneurship makes to society are increasing the solidarity and cohesion, encouraging cooperation between people and volunteering, inspiring people to innovatively solve problems that society faces, etc. Even more importantly, it provides an increasing amount of people with employment, many social enterprises produce food and help people who are hungry, get something on their plates, but it also boosts the economy from the socioeconomic as well as traditional economic perspectives. Social entrepreneurs operate in the fields of family safety, animal protection, environmental sustainability, promotion of health and physical activity, fair trade, social inclusion, sustainable energy sources, etc.  Thus, social entrepreneurship seems to substantially contribute to the positive changes we increasingly see in this world, and since making a social enterprise flourish is very difficult, especially with the difficulty of gaining funding, we should invest some effort into nourishing it and helping the budding social entrepreneurs thrive even more. As a member of the social entrepreneurship community, we will hopefully help our colleagues through creation of this article, which is going to contain some information on how to finance a socially focused business.

                In general, there are many options for funding a social enterprise. Some of the initiatives through which many countries are trying to promote it, are granting loans at favourable rates, grants, subventions and funds, which are specifically focused on this type of business. In addition, social enterprises are also receiving a lot of attention from the European Union, which designed a strategy for promoting social entrepreneurship all the way to the year 2020. One of the reasons it has done so is probably the fact that nearly 20% of Europeans are already walking the path of social exclusion and poverty, which is a very frightening statistic for a part of the world, which is supposed to be among the better developed ones. A few initiatives that the EU has taken on in providing financing options to social enterprises are through the European Social Fund, which is supposed to promote employment and social cohesion in the member states of the European Union, the European Agricultural Fund, which aims to support European farming community and the European microfinance initiative. Besides these institutionalized funding options, there are also quite a few private financing strategies. These include social bank, which is an umbrella term for ethical and alternative banks, the private investors, for example, companies which are already operating in the social entrepreneurship sphere or who wish to expand their operations to incorporate more socially sustainable projects and through philanthropic funding, for example, if you have a really remarkable idea, you could contact people such as Warren Buffer & Bill Gates, who would certainly be excited to help. One of such initiatives supported by Bill Gates and Microsoft, is Salman Khans’ YouTube mathematics lessons, which later developed into Khan Academy. Gates initial investment into the project was $1.5 million, however, he later poured in at least another $7.5 million. This means that if your idea is really good and you can persuade a famous philanthropist to support it, it could enable your help to reach millions of people. For an inspiration, make a note of Khan Academy, which today educates over 10 million people a month.

                Another path of obtaining financing for a social enterprise which should not be forgotten and actually resembles what Gates did with Khan academy, though we have observed that many social enterprises wish to avoid it, is getting funding through donations. Even though we realize that most social enterprises wish to contribute to the society with their hard earned money, we feel that sometimes slightly too much attention is put on that, as what is supposed to matter is helping people, not where you obtained the means to do it. A few simple ways of collecting donations can be through posting a “donate” link button to your webpage, promoting your cause and willingness to accept donations through social media, or through directly contacting companies who you feel care about society, to perhaps help you with your start. If you are sincere, persistent and honest in your efforts, we are certain that success will come your way. You could also try to gain funding through sponsorships or memberships.

                Hopefully, we have provided you with some valuable insight into obtaining funding to help change the world yourself, through your own social enterprise. If you feel there is something we forgot to mention, don’t hesitate to tell us about it within the comments section bellow and if you wish us to write another article on this topic, let us know about that as well, or any other topic you want us to touch upon of course. Enjoy your day and don’t forget to read our other articles as well. If you are into social entrepreneurship, you could perhaps start with the article on social franchising.

Online privacy concerns have been gaining increasing attention over the past decade. Despite the fact that individuals had many privacy concerns even before the world wide web emerged, it seems their worries have substantially increased ever since. Importantly, the hype seems to be justified, as getting our identity stolen over the internet is much more likely and common, than it was in the old times, as there are around 3.5 billion users who prey on you online today, which is quite a substantial number in comparison to the few thousand people who you came across during a lifetime before occurrence of Internet.

                One of the concerns which is present in the minds of most online users is related to the extensive use of cookies, which are utilized by the majority of popular websites in order to track customers’ movement on their page. Even more concerning is the fact that despite the widespread use of cookies, webpages seldom post any privacy-related notices and even less of them have incorporated a formal privacy policy into their website. It is also necessary to stress that the online world has made it increasingly effortless to amass large amounts of user related information, which makes consumers’ frustration even greater.

                Interestingly enough, even though the privacy concerns are discussed a lot in the media, the number of complaints on breaching peoples’ privacy online remains low. A few reasons for this trend might be the privacy policies which companies already have in place, collection of information without analysing them, meaning that the privacy breaches remain hidden and also the consumer related unawareness of the privacy legislation and their rights. Despite the recent proliferation of big data, many companies also don’t know how to utilize the vast amount of information they accumulate, however, with improvement of new web based technologies and increased familiarity with the science behind big data, it is assumed that companies are going to catch up and start using all the data, they have saved on their servers. One of the concerns here is that hackers might access such stored information even before companies figure out how to use them and if hackers go through all the trouble of accessing the information, they probably also know how to use it.

                The greatest issue with all this is not the data collection itself, but companies’ non-transparent ways of going about it, i.e., many websites don’t tell their visitors which data is being collected and how this data is going to be used. On the positive note however, most professional websites are starting to pay more attention to this issue and developing comprehensive privacy policies. One of the initiatives which is contributing to these efforts is the requirement of European Union that all websites contain a pop-up cookie collection statement, which usually also contains a direct link to websites’ privacy policy.

                One of the consequences of online privacy breach can be identity theft. If you want to learn more about it or on how to protect yourself from it, read our “Identity Theft” article and make your presence online more secure. 

Identity theft refers to the situation in which an individual steals your personal information with the intention of committing fraud. Some ways in which this information can be fraudulently applied are through loan applications, tax returns or health related services. Moreover, such actions may ruin your credit rating and even more importantly, they can be costly and time consuming to repair. It follows that keeping your identity secure, especially when you are browsing the web is highly important. Even more importantly, you should educate your children on maintaining online privacy as well, as in the opposite case, identity could be stolen from them and they might enter their adulthood with serious problems to deal with. When identity is stolen from children, the consequences can be even worse than when it is stolen from adults, as it usually takes time for such thefts to be discovered, while children and their parents usually don’t pay to much attention to the child’s credit rating. When the child becomes an adult and starts paying attention, it is often already too late to have any significant impact upon what happened.

According to United States government, there are several distinctive categories of identity theft. Namely, those are child ID theft, which has been described above, tax ID theft, which refers to a situation where the perpetrator gets a hold of victims’ social security number in order to file misleading tax return, medical ID theft, which serves the thief to fraudulently debit your health insure provider, senior ID theft, which is quite self-explanatory and refers to the ID theft from our senior citizens, which are especially vulnerable consumer group in that respect and social ID theft, where the perpetrator accesses and abuses your personal information like pictures, name and other, in order to create a social media account and possibly commit damage to your reputation. It follows that no matter which consumer group you belong to, you’re probably at risk of identity theft. We recommend that you don’t worry about it too much, as it is something which is difficult to influence, however, there are some precautions which you can take, in order to keep your identity as safe as possible.

The United States government gives a few recommendations on preventing identity theft, i.e., on keeping your identity secure. Most of them are quite is to implement and we recommend that you start with those. Now let us list the ways in keeping your identity secure. You should keep your social security number safe at all time. Unless you urgently need it, don’t carry it around with you and only hand it to an authorised person when there is no other possibility. It is important that you never give out your personal information over the telephone or the internet, especially if you don’t know/trust the person/company who is on the other side. For example, if you need to pay for something over the phone, rather ask the person to give you their bank account information so you can transfer the money, than giving them your personal information over the phone, as even a company you trust can sometimes make a mistake and hire a wrong type of person, which might abuse your information. When you are withdrawing cash from ATM, giving out personal information at the bank or discussing your health issues with your nurse, always pay attention to people who might be listening in to your conversation. Don’t leave your mail box unattended for days, if you plan to go on a holiday or business trip, ask the post office to hold your mail. Regularly pay attention to any potential changes in your bank account. With the accessibility of online banking and other services which some banks offer, like SMS notification of all bank transfers and withdrawals, this shouldn’t be too big of a deal. If your bank charges for such services, remember that 1-10€/month (my bank charges 1€, I don’t know about charges of others) is a small charge in comparison to having your bank account emptied. Shred paper with personal information before throwing it into the bin. There is a low likelihood that someone is going to go through the trash in order to get a hold of your personal information, but you can never know. Have your smart devices (computers, telephones, iPads, etc.) secured with complex passwords and change those passwords on a regular basis. Whenever possible, your passwords should include big letters, small letters, alphanumeric characters, etc. The more complex the better. Also secure your network with firewalls and anti-virus software. Usually you can find free versions of high quality software online. We use Avast. Remember, taking at least some of the steps to secure yourself is better than taking none of them!

Sometimes, no matter how many precautions we take, our identity gets stolen anyway and in such cases it is important to deal with it as quickly and efficiently as possible. The first thing you need to do is report the incident to the responsible authorities. You can start with the police and they will advise you where to go next. Once you report the crime, you will get a confirmation, which can help you resolve issues with banks, creditors and other institutions you might have fallen out of favour with. If your identity has been stolen on a long-term basis, you can also report it to human rights watch, if your medical ID has been stolen you should report it to medical care fraud office, if tax identity was stolen you should report it to your national tax office, etc.

Recently, law enforcement agencies have noticed a new trend within the identity theft area, which they refer to as synthetic identity theft. In contrast to predominant identity theft style, where the perpetrator steals all the personal information of a person in order to build a fresh identity, synthetic identity theft refers to an instance, where the thief pinches parts of information from different individuals, in order to create an entirely new persona, e.g., a person might steal the social security number of one person, tax ID from another and medical ID from the third person, in order to unify all of them into a single fictitious individual. Because such a scheme is not related to one single individual, it is much more difficult to identify and even more difficult to prevent. It is important to note that children are especially vulnerable to this type of fraud. The only way to deal with synthetic identity theft is to continuously monitor what is happening with your accounts and identity where it matters. If you discover you’ve been a victim, report the incident immediately.

As you’ve been able to observe, there are many distinctive types of identity theft and unfortunately, they are quite common. Thankfully there are many precautions you can take in order to avoid it. If you are interested in protecting your identity online, you could also look up BitBank, which is a company, which specializes in securing your personal information on the world wide web. If you wish to explore more on the topic, we encourage you to browse through other related articles on our website. Lastly, it needs to be restated that you shouldn’t worry about the issue too much, as it is commonly related to sheer luck. Stay lucky J

On Thursday 10 March 2016 Citim (Centre for Information on the Third world,55 avenue de la Liberté, L-1931 Luxembourg) launched "Need for Seed" a project to Examine Food Sovereignty, Food Security and cultivated biodiversity.

The event facilitated a free, public, exchange of information on world-wide seed issues, primarily concerning the dangers of genetically modified food and was introduced by Jean Feyder, Ancien Ambassador for Luxembourg at WTO (World Trade Organisation), Geneva and member of the ASTM Board of Directors and author of "La Faim Tue" (Hunger Kills). ASTM stands for Action Solidaire Tiers Monde (Third World Action Solidarity).

Frank Adams, founding member of the Luxembourg SEED network and an expert on cultivated biodiversity & food quality showed slides and lead a group discussion, with several other practisioners from the cultivated biodiversity space, in Luxembourg: Steve Schwartz of Kraizschouschteschgaart and Klouschtergaart, Georges Moes of Natur & ëmwelt, as well as Estrella Catarata, director of the Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes (PNFSP). Madam Catarata is one of ASTM's partners from the Philippines and she informed the group of the current situation regarding small Filipino farmers and their efforts to save seed sovereignty in their country.

The group emphasised the importance of simple and traditional seeds as the basis for the constant struggle on food sovereignty from the north to the south of our planet. Today the standardisation of seeds especially from genetically modified plants endangers our heritage and the precious biodiversity of our food and livelihood.

With the "Need for Seed" project, CITIM, in collaboration with three local players, Network SEED Luxembourg, the private initiative Kraizschouschteschgaart, and Natur & ëmwelt, want to encourage and help us to bring the greatest possible biodiversity to our own gardens and also to help consumers and growers alike to reclaim their self-sufficiency in food production.

MFTSE Affairs S.A., aims to support this new venture and share opinions on FEM.lu

The OECD said in 1999: Any private entity conducted in the public interest, organised with an entrepreneurial strategy but whose main purpose is not the maximisation of profit but attainment of certain economic and social goals, which has the capacity of bringing innovative solutions to the problems of social exclusion and unemployment.

See our Discussion Topics on how such enterprises might be funded and financed.

Housing that is not only high quality but also affordable can be hard to come by these days, so where do eco houses fit in when it comes to both developed and developing markets? 

An enthusiastic speech by Chris Doude van Troostwijk of Luxembourg School of Religion & Society: "Ideas awake philosophers from a Kant perspective he declared". (Immanuel Kant argued that moral principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it denies the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we confirm our actions to the categorical imperative which is an absolute duty).

GR Business Days, which took place on the Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th June, has become an important rendez-vous for business, SME’s and innovative start-ups. Clearly, GR Business Days which is organized by the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce is now more than just a show, demonstrating the considerable dynamism of the Greater Region internationally.

Very good and encouraging traction has been recieved recently ranging from agreement with different bodies to promote MFTSE's business to co-operation interest from the fund association - Alfi, especially concerning Financial Literacy. We will soon be able to capitalise on all this as we publish more articles, obtain feedback and build the web-site: finance-eco-money.lu.

We were privileged to be invited to attend a wonderful evening in Beckerich, Luxembourg on Tuesday 28 July 2015 which, together with CELL(Centre Ecological Learning Luxembourg), and Transition West, hosted the second overnight stop for the cycling team from AlterTour (www.altertour.net).