Huffington Post Impact: Telenovela Launches for Immigrant and Refugee Entrepreneurs

I’m excited to be one of the bloggers joining multimedia changemakers Causecast in writing about service and social action for the newly launched Huffington Post Impact. Local organization Creating Economic Opportunities for Women (CEO Women) was a natural choice for coverage with the educational telenovela they’ve just launched (and which is detailed on “Business-Building Telenovela Launches for Female Immigrant and Refugee Entrepreneurs” and abridged below).

…Why use workbooks and pens when serialized video can be introduced to adult students to create more engagement and better take home value?

A similar line of thinking led Oakland, Calif., organization CEO Women to create Grand Café, an educational video series that features four immigrant women helping each other grow their endeavors after meeting in a business start-up class. The characters speak English and their experiences are cataloged in a Latin Telenovela format, and the protagonists (including a jewelry maker from Haiti, a handywoman from Mexico, and an accountant from China) were based on the nonprofit’s own immigrant and refugee entrepreneur clientele.

The first four episodes of the planned 18-part series are currently being rolled out in Oakland and San Jose with lessons on separating personal and business expenses, seeking out computer skills, and securing bank loans. (And, this being soap opera-esque, there’s a love story thrown in.) CEO Women, whose main aim is helping women increase their business skills to become economically independent, is using the series to scale their current 16-week business training program, and at least 700 women have viewed the telenovela-as-curriculum since it launched in September.

(Full post on Huffington Post Impact.)