SOCIAL ENTERPRISE NEWS AND DISCUSSION

Professor Muhammad Yunus, the father of social business, is currently visiting Bahrain to take part in the Social Business Week 2012.  During this stay, he told the media that Bahrain could be a social business hub of the region where youth can gather with their own ideas. “We are looking at the creation of social [...]

Want to know what goes on in the world of social enterprise in China?  A report released today by the Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE), an organization supporting young social entrepreneurs in Asia, shares insights on the current state of social entrepreneurship in China. Data was gathered in a survey of 52 social enterprises [...]

Singapore President Tony Tan Keng Yam made a visit to social enterprise Eighteen Chefs today to urge Singaporeans to move beyond financial contributions to give their time, talent, and business acumen to help the less fortunate. Eighteen Chefs is a cafe that employs ex-offenders and delinquents, which was founded by ex-offender Benny Se Teo.  It [...]

According to a report by the Bangkok Post, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Thailand is finding ways to support social enterprise development through capital markets. “As a regulator, the SEC can help by setting up rules.  We’re studying whether to set up a new [trading] sector in the market exclusively for them,” said [...]

Bizlink Centre in Singapore has a slightly different take on providing social services to its beneficiaries.  It cares for people with disability by allowing them the opportunity to be independent and re-integrate into society.  By running social enterprises in cleaning, data entry and IT, human resource outsourcing, and packaging and fulfillment, it provides feasible means [...]

For a group of young entrepreneurs ranging in their early 20s to 30s from India, El Salvador, New Zealand, Brazil, and South Africa, Israel had always appeared through the media as a country of conflict and filled with negativity.  On August 13-16, they gathered in Israel for the Social Entrepreneur Exchange (SEE) Israel.  Organized by [...]

The value that the Korean government places on social enterprise can be monitored over the past few years.  One significant step was establishing the Social Enterprise Promotion Act in 2007.  The government holds the belief that social enterprises are a means to tame unemployment rates (which currently stands at 3.5% overall and 8.5% among youth – [...]

A speaker at last month’s National Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Business was reported to have called for companies to move away from charitable work and create social businesses instead.  He claimed that charity is a stop gap measure that merely mitigates socio-economic problems, but does not offer long term solutions to [...]

A proposal approved on Thursday by the Cabinet amends the Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983 which reduces the power of the bank’s board and gives more authority to the chairman for picking the managing director of the microfinance institution. The majority of the bank’s shares and board seats are currently held by female Grameen Bank members, [...]

“I have news for you,” explains Tom Mboya of Inuka Kenya Trust, “there is no Superman (it’s up to us).”  Superman may not be able to save us from the world’s most pressing problems, but Clark Kent isn’t the only hidden hero there is.  In attempt to find the individuals positively impacting their communities and [...]