Hi, my name is Sunit Shrestha and this is my personal site.
I am a social entrepreneur and development innovation designer based in Bangkok.
Education:
I read Economics at Thammasat University. I am also a Bloomberg Fellow in Finance.
My Work:
I won the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Award in 2001 when I was an undergraduate student, the awarded grant was used to co-found TRN Institute. TRN allows me to engage diverse areas in development related to social innovation and technology from Online Open Courseware with the ministry of education all the way to intensive organic farming support systems for people under poverty line. TRN’s key role is to broker and facilitate social innovation through the right mix of ideas, people and resources from its social networks.
Living as social startups investors:
In 2004 TRN and other partners jointly develop various emerging social enterprise support programme in Thailand as well as international partnership programme ‘Youth Social Enterprise Intiative (YSEI)’. The support includes seed/startup capital, knowledge, mentorship and networking for young social entrepreneurs. The supported social enterprises range from rural handicrats e-commerce in India to social-issues focused video podcasting agency in Thailand. Other than YSEI, we’re now setting up an investment unit to manage both our local and international social investment, the unit is called ‘KaosCapital’. My team and me had raised over 3 million US dollars in financing various projects and social enterprises. (The picture was when I went to Philippines to discuss with one of investee working on creative communication agency for non-profit, they were kind enough to hear me blabling at their very startup den.)
Belief in technology-enabled open society.
I believe firmly that Internet-enabled technology can empower massive collaboration in tackling political, social and environmental challenges of the new century. Such advent would bring a new Renaissance into the world. I am also interested in applying complex systems theory into various development projects by creating incentive-oriented open platforms that allow a number of people to participate, interact and innovate solutions to address common challenges in a distributed manner.
Beautiful things in life
Other than trekking in Nepali high mountains, I deeply enjoy classical music as my iPod carries over 3 thousands classical music. Speed metal, Japanese rock and Jazz could also make me high. William Blake is my very favourite poet. I am also a strong supporter of liberal democracy, open society and free media.
I hope your dream can be infected to others people more and more.
Hope you have a focus to work and help the large communities with that three million US dollar. How much more we have to spend on social investment and what are the return– Impact to the social development.
Anyway, remain focus and develop impact.
Looking forward to seeing it.
how much more we have to spend to create distributed wealth? to the scientific discovery? to the renaissance of fine arts? the answer is of course unlimited or as much as we could based on those who prefer to invest in the those areas. 3 Millions dollars are so little compare to what need to be done by those social entrepreneurs. Impact is of course ultimately for the freedom of human beings not fortunate enough to take this elite debate. How about returns on human freedom over typical ROI?
Don’t just look, do something!
Would anyone say google is ‘focus’ on their work? perhaps a slightly different meaning of focus?
Large community with 3 millions? take a quick look at global average on gini-coefficient…
ชื่นชมในความสามารถของสุนิษฐ์นะ ให้กำลังใจในการทำต่อไปจ้ะ
บางครั้งคนเราก็มีความสุขของตัวเองเป็นตัวแปรตาม
และมีความสุขของผู้อื่นเป้นตัวแปรต้น เนอะ
ทุกคนล้วนมีหน้าที่ต่อโลก คนอื่น และตนเอง น้องทำได้ดีแล้ว
อย่าลืมเติมพลังใจให้ตัวเองและคนในครอบครัวด้วยนะ
Warmest regards,
pi a
ชื่นชมอยู่ห่างๆ ครับ บางทีเห็นสิ่งที่คุณทำแล้วก็นึกย้อนถึงตัวเองนะว่าเราทำอะไรอยู่ ทำไมมัวแต่ทำธุรกิจอย่างเดียว
Good blog. let’s work on spreading good dreams in the same way good ideas are being spread by TED.