…In addition, a recent study by BusinessWeek featured 28 growing social enterprises that are worth keeping on your radar screen for future responsible job opportunities as well as potential companies to buy products from. These social enterprises really reinforce the notion that businesses can do well whiled doing good in any industry and wherever you are located! Let’s review these organizations by industry..

Southern Bancorp – This bank with operations in Arkansas and Mississippi aims at providing banking services to communities that other bank desert. Furthermore, Southern aims at reducing poverty and unemployment in rural areas, as well as increasing the high school graduation rate of the communities they serve.

Just as electric bills start to increase because of the summer heat, Entergy Arkansas, Inc. customers will see a reduction in rates – a whopping 23-percent reduction from last summer.

The lower rate will result in a $24 savings on the typical Entergy Arkansas residential customer bill, which is for 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The rate decrease is in response to lower fuel costs and projections through the end of 2010. A residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours will pay $85.91 starting in July, about what customers were paying in July of 1986.

The temperature is rising quickly on a muggy Wednesday morning as Trey Berry and I walk through the woods on Hindman Hill in Helena-West Helena, the nonsensical but now official hyphenated name for this history-rich city on the Mississippi River.

Berry, a noted historian who’s now a deputy director of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, wants to show me Battery D, one of four Union batteries built to protect Helena from Confederate attack during the Civil War.

With the deliberateness and precision of a military maneuver, Jack Hill stepped towards the crowd and provided Rotarians with several updates at the civic club’s weekly meeting Tuesday.

Hill, administrator of Northwest Regional Medical Mississippi Center, said improvements are being seen at the Clarksdale hospital, but encouraged Rotarians to investigate and determine the success of the facility on their own.

The Arkansas Tech University-Ozark campus is one of three community colleges in the state to be selected as pilot sites in the “Sustainable Communities through Community College Leadership” program.

Part of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, the program is designed to build upon existing relationships between the colleges and community groups. The other colleges selected are Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas in Helena, and Ozarka College in Melbourne.

Tonight at 7:00 on the campus of Phillips Community College in Helena-West Helena, the first class of seniors will graduate from what’s commonly known as the KIPP school.

If you closely examine how far these kids have come, you’ll realize just how remarkable this story is.

Gov. Mike Beebe will deliver the commencement address at what’s officially known as the KIPP Delta Collegiate High School. Mike Feinberg, one of the national founders of KIPP (which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program), will be there.

If there has been a more hopeful day than this one in the Arkansas Delta in recent years, I’m not sure what it is.

BLYTHEVILLE, Ark., May 20, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — At 25 years old, Monica Reed never thought she would be a homeowner. But with the help of a $5,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) and Southern Bancorp Bank of Blytheville, she is now a proud homeowner.

Hot weather is fast approaching, bringing higher temperatures, humidity and higher electricity usage as Arkansans try to keep cool. Many elderly, low-income residents need some extra help with electricity costs during summer.

Thanks to the generosity of Entergy Arkansas, Inc. customers, employees, retirees and shareholders, those customers having trouble paying their electric bill do have a place to go for help – Entergy’s The Power to Care fund.

At an employee luncheon today, Entergy Arkansas officials handed over a check for $169,655.61 to officials of the Southern Good Faith Fund, the administrator for The Power to Care program. This was the company match to a portion of customer and employee contributions in 2009, which totaled over $497,000 that will be used to help Entergy Arkansas customers in 2010.

On Wednesday – St. Patrick’s Day – various college, community, and state agencies partnered to provide students at PCCUA – Helena-West Helena with opportunities to obtain money for college during a financial aid fair in the college’s Bonner Student Center. Among those providing resources were the PCCUA Financial Aid Office, PCCUA Scholarship Office, PCCUA Student Support Services, Career Pathways, Single Parent Scholarship Fund, Workforce Centers of Arkansas, Southern Bancorp, GEAR-UP, Vocational Rehabilitation, and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.

Microlending came to the forefront of the world stage in 2006, when Muhammad Yunus shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the microlending organization he founded in Bangladesh, Grameen Bank. That company alone has lent money to more than 7.6 million people around the world.