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SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
Social Enterprise and Non Profit - working together to make a difference in the world
A Social Enterprise is sometimes described as a Not ONLY For Profit organization.
Entrepreneurs start businesses for differing reasons. The usual personal financial necessities need to be covered - food, clothing, education. Then come luxuries, and for some, power is an incentive.
Social entrepreneurs start businesses which have an additional component:
THE COMPASSION COMPONENT
the need to help others and improve lives. In order to do so they take risks that standard entrepreneurs might consider too high. They work in nations perhaps considered by the regular business community as unstable. They do not demand such strict deadlines from their suppliers. They are more understanding in many ways.Some fail and start up again later having learned from their mistakes.
Others keep going. Some struggle, others are successful, but all get their satisfaction not so much from making profits but rather from seeing the results of their efforts improving individual lives as well as whole communities in areas from where most other businesses have fled.
The motivation to help others stays consistent and is the fuel that drives many of today’s social entrepreneurs.
Often this urge to help others comes to individuals after careers spent in regular businesses.
Others seem to have this need to help built into their DNA. Perhaps their parents were philanthropists or involved in the non profit world. Perhaps they were volunteers as young people and got a taste for helping less fortunate people in other regions.
Social Enterprise is different to Charity in that skills training is nearly always a component. The old saying rings true - teach people to fish rather than giving them fish. Empowering people with income-generating expertise will last them a lifetime. Handing out food parcels may stop any time leaving people destitute and helpless once more.
Eco Africa started in the nineties in Zimbabwe, an economically deprived region of Africa from where international investors had either left in despair or would have if they could.
It is a partnership with women previously living in poverty and the focus is on skills training in the art of paper making and paper crafting.
The marketing activities focus on attracting for the artisans customers who themselves are social entrepreneurs. They buy from the artisans and sell on mainly to Fair Trade stores, whose owners are themselves social enterpreneurs. The result is a network of compassionate organizations all working together to help less fortunate people, many in far flung and neglected corners of the globe.
The last but not least component in this circle is the Non Profit. In developing countries where poverty is of crisis proportions the challenges to stay stable and healthy often overwhelm breadwinners and they lose the ability to sustain their families through pressure and poor health. The Non Profit component can supply the missing life-support projects that will allow the victims of poverty to remain healthy and stable enough to continue their working lives and maintain their families.
The circle is complete - a sustainable community has been created. Non Profit and Social Enterprise - working together to make a difference in the world.
Check out what Nicholas Kristof says in the New York Times about the benefits that for profit companies which are run on strong business principles can bring to the world of non profit and charity. Click Here to Read Article!