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Can Soup Change the World?: Part One: Detroit

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Can Soup Change the World?

14/03/2015 GMT

Part One: Detroit

BBC World News - Can Soup Change the World?, Part One: Detroit

The story of Detroit Soup: a grassroots crowd-funding project.

The story of Detroit Soup: a grassroots crowd-funding project which has raised more than 85,000 dollars for community projects in Motor City.

Once the engine of America, Detroit has fallen on hard-times. The decline of the auto industry hit the city hard, and in 2013 Motor City finally went bankrupt. Detroit Soup is community project breathing life back into the city with its monthly dinners. It's a simple concept: members of the community pay five dollars at the door, and for that they get soup, salad, bread - and a vote. Social entrepreneurs present their ideas, and whoever has the most votes at the end of the evening walks away with the money raised, and a chance to put their idea into action. Since it began in 2010, Detroit Soup has raised over 85,000 dollars which has been used to kick-start a broad range of initiatives in areas such as urban farming, art and theatre, literacy and learning, and blight clearance. It has also helped launch small businesses with a social mission - such as The Empowerment Plan and Rebel Nell, which today employ people recruited directly from homeless shelters. The BBC meets the project�s founder, Amy Kaherl, and some of the urban pioneers who have put the money raised to good use, rebuilding their city a dollar and a vote at a time.

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The BBC takes an innovative business idea from Motor City and spreads it around the world.

Detroit Soup is an innovative crowd-funding dinner which is bringing people together to raise thousands of dollars for community projects in Motor City. Since it launched five years ago, it has helped launch a range of start-ups working in areas such as urban agriculture, social justice and education - projects funded by and for the people. But could this model work in other cities? For the BBC's A Richer World season, the BBC takes Detroit Soup founder Amy Kaherl to Nepal, to start a new crowd-funding culture Kathmandu-style. 

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