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Built to Scale? Growing Pains Hit Cambodia’s Businesses for Good
With the ‘Markle Sparkle’, the little-known business - which employs survivors of human trafficking and other vulnerable women to make ethically sourced, environmentally friendly jeans - exploded. However, the spotlight also created a dilemma for the young social enterprise - or business using profits for good.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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A social enterprise in Kerala combines sustainability and women’s empowerment
Does it come as a surprise that the six yard wonder, the sari (a version of cloth) is one of the largest polluters of Vembanad lake, along with plastic? Social entrepreneur Sanju Soman, one of the people behind Bhava, a social enterprise that upcycles saris and cloth explains, “Cloth usually escapes attention as a pollutant due to the constant spotlight on plastic. It is as bad, and one of the largest pollutants taking years to disintegrate, ending up as landfill or in water bodies. A cotton bag is not very much better than a plastic bag, it also leaves a footprint in water, like here in the Vembanad lake. Plastic bags came as alternatives to paper bags, for which trees were cut. We started using more of it, less of paper bags and single use plastic became the problem it is today.”
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- South Asia
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Smallholders as Customers, Not Pupils: Making the Case for Good Agricultural Practices
Good agricultural practices offer smallholders the promise of improved food safety, food quality and environmental stewardship. But they also bring the risks of implementing costly new methods and standards. To overcome farmers' reluctance to adopt these practices, Ben Fowler of MarketShare Associates and Clara Yoon at MEDA write that agricultural organizations should adopt a customer-centric approach – treating smallholders as customers rather than beneficiaries of know-how.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
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Perspective: Become Local Change Makers Through Social Entrepreneurship
Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning ‘a reason for being’, which is roughly translated to ‘thing that you live for’ in English. Each individual’s Ikigai is personal and specific to their lives, values and beliefs. A social entrepreneur’s Ikigai is to bring systems change and/or mindset change with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social, cultural, and environmental challenges. From deep within, he/she is committed to the good of all. They are ambitious and persistent — tackling major issues and offering new ideas for systems-level change. Moreover, social entrepreneurs are not trying to ‘capture a market’. They make their ideas as simple and as safe as possible so that people in thousands of different communities will seize the idea and become local change makers.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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Perspective: The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity in Supporting Female Entrepreneurs
There is much discussion and debate about how to support female entrepreneurs — and rightly so. Currently, women-led businesses are less likely to survive, despite evidence that their startups are often highly successful. New analysis by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion. So how do we support female entrepreneurs?
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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Five Ways the Private Sector Can Align with the Sustainable Development Goals
How can the private sector advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and what’s the best way to measure the success of these efforts? Those questions were among the topics explored at the recent Sustainability and Development Conference at the University of Michigan. Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi and Dana Gorodetsky at the William Davidson Institute attended the event, and they share some essential insights on the private sector’s role in supporting the SDGs.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Impact Assessment
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My High-Profile Social Enterprise Shut Down, but It Wasn’t a Total Failure
Inspired by Broad Street Ministry‘s work on behalf of our fellow Philadelphians who are the most vulnerable, our local comfort food chain, Federal Donuts, set out to shine a light on the idea that hospitality is a fundamental human need.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- North America
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Creating Jobs While Fighting Poverty: An Innovative Social Micro-Franchise Model Gains Traction in Haiti
All too many global development efforts fail to appreciate the value of a steady paycheck – or the role of small businesses as job creators in poor communities, says Marc Blumenthal at Social Ventures Foundation (SVF). This has stagnated poverty reduction campaigns, leaving vulnerable populations in need after government and NGO funds dry up. He shares SVF's efforts to reverse this dynamic, through social micro-franchise business models that address poverty-related issues, while also creating sustainable jobs in low-income communities.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Investing
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