Social entrepreneurship is your right choice

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS YOUR RIGHT CHOICE

 End of Business as Usual

The 21^st century world societies have dramatically leaned towards competitive capitalism kind of economy, with a big feature of financial independence to every individual living in. For you to get the financial status you want and fulfill the desires in your life, you need to engage in creative and innovative kind of business, which will be conducted entrepreneurially. It is in this century when the entrepreneurship concept becomes so popular.

Are you aware that the above kind of business, from which you intend to make and maximize your own profit out of it, promotes and means being ‘SELFISH’?

Do you know that such a kind of business makes a class of people, your fellow human beings whom you live within the same community with, more poor by making yourself richer and richer?

I am not intending to make you stop thinking of doing business or become an entrepreneur but I want you to start thinking differently.

I am sure you would like to see everyone from your community living a happy life. But remember, by engaging in a ‘selfish’ business, which intends to make profit for yourself, it is difficult for you help others to the extent to which you would want to. You can’t help all of them by giving little money each. This kind of support is unsustainable, because they will keep on coming to you and ultimately they will become ‘beggars’, which is again something you would’t like.

Social Entrepreneurship is your right choice

Today I want to let you know that SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS YOUR RIGHT CHOICE.

 This is also a business but its intention and focus differs from the above conventional business/ entrepreneurship. In this case,  the value you create goes to the society because the focus of the social enterprise is on benefiting and developing your society. You also benefit from it as a member of the same society/community, and a founder of such social enterprise. What you need to do here is just think and come up with an idea, which will at the end of the day enable the community to benefit sustainably from such a business.

A bright example of social entrepreneurship in my society

In my society there is a social entrepreneur who knows how to use coconut remnants to make different ornaments for selling. What she does is visiting beggars in streets, especially those who are disabled but they can do something by their hands, mobilize and train them how to make those ornaments, then give them a chance to do so in her established office in town. Her work now is to find market and sell those products within and in foreign countries. Out of what she gets out of that business/sells; some percent goes directly to all the disabled people and some is used to run the office and buy raw materials. She is now helping a lot of disabled people in our society as they stop begging and engage themselves into hand works, which ensures them a daily bread. At the same time, she helps a number of young unemployed people, who are now busy collecting those coconut remnants in town and sell to her instead of remaining street vendors or being thugs.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

How do you think this woman feels by engaging in this kind of business? In fact she is enjoying and feeling happy because many people are benefiting directly from her business and their life is changing to a better one. Do you think if she could decide to be giving these people just a donation of some money out of her profit made in the conventional business kind, she could succeed to help this big number of people like she does now? Of course NO, because helping people to learn how to fish is more sustainable than giving them fish. Her social business is now established like a sustainable business. Even when she is not there, those people can continue to make the ornaments and sell for their life. The good news is that she is in need for more people to get engaged because the business is growing every day.

By running social enterprise you will enjoy the benefits of getting social capital and good relations with people around you because you work with them while you are also helping them. You will be loved and also happy for the support you give others. That’s in our human nature.

Social entrepreneurship is growing a lot in recent years. What you need to know is that, though it has the same characteristics like conventional business entrepreneurship for instance; creativity, coming up with innovative ideas, it is after discovering opportunities, having a good business plan, good marketing, good customer care etc, the big difference is on its focus and vision. Social entrepreneurship focus is to directly help people in the community and ensure great social change.

Remember: giving people some amount of little money out of your big profit/ surplus you got from your own profit making business is not social entrepreneurship because your basic focus was to enrich yourself and not the society. So you need to be careful when you are developing a social enterprise idea – this is an important process, which will determine whether what you are doing or intend to do is a social enterprise or something else.

Try to think now; what is your great mission in this world before you die? Are you motivated by the mission to make a living while serving your fellow human beings by doing social change to make the world a better place to live?

You have to know that by engaging in social entrepreneurship kind of business you will leave in the world a sustainable mark of yourself for ever. Social entrepreneurship normally ensures the social change you want, it makes your society or community independent financially and kicks out following granters all the time. Think now to engage yourself in this kind of business so that you could enjoy living in your community with others.

Good luck.

By: Erick Chrispin