Inflection Point

What is a social enterprise? What are social entrepreneurs?

A conventional businesses is in business to make profit for its shareholders. Wait, you say, many for-profit companies support charities, provide grants for the community, etc. The answer is yes they do, but they are doing this in a framework of making profit. Social enterprises take what would have been shareholder profit and use it to support social aims.

A social enterprise is not a charity. It is a business. But, it is a business that uses its profit to address a social need. In addition, many social enterprises are innovators. Their innovation is social innovation, a radically new way to address a social problem. So, they generate a social impact while being financially sustainable at the same time.

A social enterprise needs to remain sustainable while achieving its social aim. Commonly, there is a need to deliver on both financial and social performance targets. This is often referred to as having a double bottom line. Some social enterprises employ a triple bottom line. This means that a particular social enterprise has not only financial and social performance targets, but also employs an environmental performance target. (abstracted from the Youth Social Enterprise Initiative wiki)

Here at GK3, I have met so many incredible social entrepreneurs. They are incredible! Each is using Information and Communications  Technologies for Development (ICT4D). We spent a long time talking. I could have been speaking to any of the entrepreneurs that I know across the world building startups. Cash flow, communications, marketing, making the pitch, financing... BUT, I was not, I was talking to social Entrepreneurs that were taking that energy and channeling it into changing the world. SO cool!

Interested in learning more?

• The Meaning of "Social Entrepreneurship"
• ICT for Development (ICT4D)
• Various resources from YSEI

Following are video interviews with Jose, Ndekezi and Tumi.

Jose Njuki-Imwe, Kimathi Information Centre, Kenya

Ndekezi Maarifa Vincent, Outward Bound Rwanda

Ncube Xolisani, Zimbabawe, xncube1982@yahoo.co.uk

I'm staying at the Traders Hotel for this trip which is just wonderful. The service is incredible, the architecture is very hip and the location - less than 3 minutes from my room to the conference - is GREAT! The breakfast that the hotel provides is phenomenal. The depth and breadth of the options talks to the multicultural nature of Malaysia. I opted for a traditional Malaysian breakfast this morning - congee. It was incredibly good and very different. I had it with a variety of dressings including Century Eggs! These were really interesting.

I had the great fortune of talking with Chong Sheau Ching today at lunch. She is an incredible woman and a dynamo. We discussed sustainable development, corporate responsibility, & building community. She challenged me to challenge the status quo, change the model and the rewrite the rules. She really inspired me and I wanted to tell you about her and her organization.

Chong heads up eHome Makers, South East Asia's only community network that promotes working from home, teleworking and the running of SOHO businesses through the use of information and communications technology. eHome Makers' vision it "Helping people to help themselves through ICT and innovation". eHome Makers is a sustainable organization that is addressing the plight of the urban poor. This, I have learned, is a group that is vastly under-served by aid and development efforts. This is a model that should be emulated across the world. It really works.

How did eHome Makers start out? "Chong Sheau Ching received many email messages from mothers around the world after writing "A Job Only Mothers Can Do" in her weekly column "Stories For My Mother" in The Star, one of Malaysia’s leading English language dailies. In this particular article, she described the social stigma she faced after quitting her international career in favor of a home-based consultancy. Having read the numerous e-mail responses she received, Chong realized that many mothers think motherhood involves only two choices: stay at home for the children or continue with a career outside the home, thereby leaving the children in the hands of caregivers. A third option – work from home – was rarely considered." Read the rest of the story... 

"Working @ home" - a guidebook for working women and homemakers provides insights into establishing home office and home-based businesses, based on the writers' first-hand, push-and-pull experiences as mothers and home-based businesswomen. Writers Audrey Fong, Chong Sheau Ching, June Chan and Katharine Yip discuss aspects of decision-making, self-esteem, financial management, establishing and sustaining a home-based business, balancing home office and family life and networking in a most reader-friendly style. The content is complemented by inspirational quotes, attractive illustrations, checklists, case studies and self-evaluation exercises. The book is available here.

My thanks to Chong for taking the time to educate and advise me.

I have to say, Kuala Lumpur (KL) is a great city from what I have seen thus far (mostly during my trek from the airport to the hotel and my first night out.

Before I start talking about the day's session, let me take a minute to set the stage. I am one of just a few men at this workshop. I'm very honored to be invited to participate in it and it has really provided me with a much deeper understanding, knowledge and perspective on a number of issues. I am going to try to provide some highlights from the day and a few key observations at the end of the post.

After opening remarks by Ms. Rinalia Abdul Rahim (Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) , ITF Advisory Committee) setting the stage for the Gk3 conference and the ITF workshop, Dr. Barbara Waugh (Director of University Relations, Hewlett-Packard Company, USA, ITF Steering Committee) provided some groundwork. One of her key themes (and I paraphrase) really struck a cord with me: Technology is neutral - it can be an enabler, or it can enable marginalization. The other point that Barbara raised was the need for coordination of effort. Coordination efforts are fragmented, how do we coordinate these efforts to maximize impact?

Opening panel (Strategies for Increasing Women’s Impact in the Knowledge Society)

Dr. Barbara Waugh (Director of University Relations, Hewlett-Packard Company, USA, ITF Steering Committee) provided some groundwork. One of her key themes (and I paraphrase) really struck a cord with me: Technology is neutral - it can be an enabler, or it can enable marginalization. Another big point that Barbara raised was the need for coordination of effort. Coordination efforts are fragmented, how do we coordinate these efforts to maximize impact? Both of these points are ???

Dr. Gloria Bonder (Coordinator, UNESCO Chair on Science and Technology in Latin America; ITF Steering Committee) looked at Latin America. Her talk really resonated with me. She stated that in some LATAM countries, there is near gender equity in the use of the Internet and cell phones. This was surprising to me, but as it turned out during our later break, that this is perhaps more prevalent in a variety of countries (e.g. US and Malaysia). So across LATAM, the Internet and mobile gender gaps are closing (access gap), but there is still a low number of women involved in the creation of technology, content, applications and in policy making decisions. She posed the question - Are me making a new generation of woman consumers or are we helping women to become full participants in the knowledge society?

On the lower corner of one of Gloria's slides was a point that I think was exceptionally important: "Increase Internet Use for Citizen Participation". This notion of producer/consumer is a concept that I will be making in my talk on Tuesday. It is, I believe, one of the core trends that changes the rules. One of Gloria's final slides had a great quote: It is not a matter of adding gender to the worlds cosmologies, but more a matter of rewriting them.

Second session (Bold Vision to Bold Strategy: A Multi-stakeholder Impact Agenda for Broadening Global Prosperity through Gender Equity and ICTs)

The goal of this session was to identify and understand the influence of the ITF to date and to introduce a comprehensive strategy for global impact for the future.

The heart of the proposal presented was to put together a global institute with 10 regional centers fully functional is 3 years which would Broaden Global Prosperity through Gender Equity and ICTs by:

• Leverage and escalate global collaborative research
• Amplify current resources and services for more effective use of funding
• Implement policy through coordinated direct action
• Accelerate and scale metrics
• Communicate best practices across cultures

This is an interesting idea, because it focuses efforts, shares models/best practices globally and lets them get implemented in a regional context.

After the presentation on the model there were presentations on existing regional efforts. While independent, these centers use similar models placed into local context to achieve their goals. This concept is one that is really critical of a networked model. well coordinated sharing and solutions that are highly customizable to meet the needs of the local community. I will not go into details on each of the centers, but will ins

Ms. Dorothy Gordon's (Director-General, Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT) presentation touched on a few points that I though reflected some recurring themes:

• Mastering ICT as a competitive advantage - the leapfrog effect
• Issue - access versus cost. Need the think outside of the box.
• We need to address the global workforce problem - and the brain-drain.

Afternoon breakouts followed up on this,digging into three target areas: Entrepreneurship, workforce and education. I participated in the education working group.

Observations:

• When you project forward to 2010, the number of IT jobs far outstrips the number of people that there are to fill them. This is true whether you are talking about India, Europe or the US. We need to look at both the traditional IT workspace which this comment addresses but also the new emerging demands that will be come as the diffusion of IT puts new requirements on domain experts.
• Kids push their parents to adopt technology, workers push their corporations to adopt technology that they use in their private lives.
• We continually moved between the two distinctly different areas: IT as an ends vs IT as a means. Some economies need to address ICT skills as an END, as employable skills. Other economies demand ICT skills as a means to step into a new space.