This coming Sunday, June 27th, Grameen Bank, in cooperation with Columbia’s Business School will offer all day lab designed to provide an understanding of the social enterprise sector and how businesses operating in this space can impact issues on a global and national level.

As you drive from San Salvador to Suchitoto, you pass gnarled trees twisted into startling shapes, burnt swatches of field, bunkers set into the hillside, and entire churches blown apart save for the arched entrance, leaving a path of sky where the congregants once sat in prayer. But you will also pass high groves of fruit trees and untouched fields of lush grass swept sideways by the wind. Once again, the stark contrast between beauty and the ravages left by a brutal civil war is in evidence everywhere. Back home in New York, I was waiting for a friend of mine at a local restaurant. Out of the blue, a woman sitting alone, nursing a tropical drink in a shade of blue I’ve never before seen in liquid form, struck up a conversation with me. She spoke of a renowned scientist who has built a renewable energy plant in Nicaragua and wants to do the same in… guess where? El Salvador.

Sheila Blackmond and her family were once the subject of ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, but many years later, they still face many challenges and hardships. Take a moment this holiday to learn their story and see if you can lend a hand.

Our culture doesn’t have a model for dealing with those who don’t succeed in it. Maybe it’s time to make compassion and giving part of our business model.