Hello Edan et al,
A few more ideas for you...
if you haven't already you might look into the "base of the pyramid" (BOP) literature concerning commercial product/service development for low-income markets -- some of this concerns social enterprise and some not so explicitly.
As you may already know, IDEO has taken a big role in this kind of work, See for example this Fast Company overview
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alissa-walker/designerati/human-centered-design-toolkit-shares-information
It's funded largely by the Rockefeller foundation which has this area of design/social innovation/well being in one of its programs, though its work has not gone without criticism.
You can download IDEO's report, "Design for Social IMpact" for Rockefeller here
http://osocio.org/message/design_for_social_impact/
for tech assistance and capacity, there are a few more interesting groups, again you may already have come across them: Aid to Artisans, Ten Thousand Villages, and the North South project. You might also consider some of the emerging labeling systems (eg Rugmark, fairtrade) and related rights organizations (human rights watch) not only for their capacity building, but perhaps for some theoretical underpinnings. I've written about some of these issues and have links to these groups here
http://designactivism.net/archives/101
Design that Matters and Architecture for Humanity also cover the assistance and capacity territory, find links to these org.s in a post I wrote here:
http://designactivism.net/archives/43
Another avenue you probably shouldn't overlook is university/academic design assistance. Although this arguably is more common in architecture, the approach of getting students to work on projects for communities in need under supervision from the faculty, is becoming more common. In any case I come across a fair number of these projects done by architects who end up designing what we might call "products." Rural Studio is probably the best known but there are many others.
For social enterprise I think you'll end up having to consider how to adapt broader economic theories to design. Last year I covered social innovation/enterprise topics with my students using a short article by Marjorie Kelly “Not Just for Profit,” in Strategy + Business, Spring 2009 (you can get this article online but have to register with the site). Beyond that there is a growing literature and a few large foundations/centers that work on social enterprise as you probably already know (Acumen, Skoll, Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Young Foundation) and these have produced a lot of reports etc. on the wider topic, not necessarily touching upon design explicitly.
In my own research I've turned up a number of cases where designers work with various communities in need and would be happy to discuss further off line searching through my archive for the types of cases you're interested in as your research progresses.
Best,
Ann
Ann Thorpe
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Dept of Design, Development, Environment & Materials
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
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