Social Enterprise

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 may 2016

UK-India Social Enterprise Education Network (UKISEEN), a collaborative project between IIT Madras (India) and University of Southampton (UK), funded by British Council, was recently launched in India. Prof. Pathik Pathak, Director of Social Enterprise and founding director of Social Impact Lab at University of Southampton, explains his views on social entrepreneurship education and employment, aims and objectives of UKISEEN and how India is embracing social entrepreneurship. ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: 'Fundamentally, it's about using entrepreneurship and innovation to drive social change. Social entrepreneurship is important because it gives students a unique skill-set...We think that social entrepreneurship is a catalyst for producing the graduates that the world needs. This is why so many universities in India have embraced social entrepreneurship.' ON UKISEEN: 'It involves universities collaborating to understand the best practices in social entrepreneurship education and exchanging ideas. There are two levels to the collaboration - at the faculty level and student level.' ON ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES: 'Employability is all about leadership now...universities' role includes more than merely educating students. Social entrepreneurship helps students inculcate innovation and creative skills. Fundamentally, it is about problem-solving, which is what leadership is all about as well. Besides, regardless of the profession you enter, you need to be entrepreneurial.' ON EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES: 'One can go and work in the social investment space...Another indirect way is that it gives them the skills to go into the workforce and become leaders.' Read on...

The Hindu: Leadership through entrepreneurship
Author: Sarthak Saraswat

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 07 apr 2016

This year's World Health Day, that falls today (07 April 2016), has the theme 'Beat Diabetes!'. The World Health Organization has singled out tackling diabetes as one of the most critical healthcare challenge but at the same time tried to give a strong message that it is not too hard to manage if people can put their thoughts and actions in the right direction. Alex Jones, health economist at the social enterprise Oxford Policy Management and researcher at University of the West Indies, provides historial perspective on how international health organizations and governments over time have developed and implemented different types of policies in tackling global health issues. Sometimes they have utilized a single disease approach and at others they have been more holistic and tried to improve health systems around the world. He further explores two approaches and provides opinion on their long-term benefits. According to him, 'A quick look back through history reveals a disturbingly cyclical pattern: As an international community we've been flip-flopping between the two approaches - vertical and horizontal - for at least the last century.' He explains, 'As far back as the 1920s, the sector saw the growth of what was known as the 'Social Medicine Movement' - based on the consideration that ill health could actually be a consequence of poor social conditions...Throughout the first half of the 20th century the Rockefeller Foundation became one of the most influential organisations in global health, implementing programmes in over 80 countries...it always kept the aim of combating specific diseases through targeted campaigns. Post-war politics saw the creation of a number of international agencies that pursued similar vertical programmes...The failure of the GMEP (WHO's Global Malaria Eradication Project) and the relative success of Mao Zedong's community-led 'Barefoot Doctors' programme in China both helped to swing the global health pendulum towards a more horizontal 'systems' approach. In 1975, the WHO launched its Primary Health Care strategy and in 1978 (after sustained advocacy from the Soviet Union) the famous Alma-Ata conference was held...this was a pledge to build up basic health systems around the world...and heralded the birth of the 'Health for All'...The beginning of the 80's, however, saw the pendulum swing firmly back towards vertical interventions...the last ten years have seen a swing back to the ideals of Alma-Ata and the mantra of putting people - rather than pathogens - front and centre of health initiatives...In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly formally recognised and unanimously endorsed the idea of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).' While explaining the current state of health policy focus and interventions, he comments, 'Given the benefit of hindsight, there's a strong risk that today's current focus on UHC might not survive the constant push towards seemingly more feasible, targeted interventions. This apparently inevitable swing to the vertical, however, misses the point on two key fronts: First, history shows us that morbidities are integrated, both with each other and with our ways of life. Second, when something new comes along, a health sector built around a few target pathogens simply cannot deal with it.' Finally, he suggests, 'Let's continue to focus resources where significant advances in disease eradication are possible, partnering with those who can make this happen - but let's take care not to do this at the expense of overall systems strengthening.' Read on...

The Financial Times: Healthcare for all: A zero-sum game?
Author: Alex Jones

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 mar 2016

Food wastage is becoming a substantial cause of concern around the world. France recently passed laws to restrict throwing away or destroying food and UK's biggest retailer, Tesco, pledging to give all leftover food to charities. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations website (fao.org) - Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted; Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries. Governments, food chains and retailers, charitable organizations and social enterprises, need to come together to find ways to restrict and minimize food waste and make substantial part of it available to where it is required most. Following are some valuable suggestions - (1) Logistics: Efficient coordination between supermarkets and charities is essential. Supermarkets shouldn't just dump food at charities. Elaine Montegriffo, CEO of SecondBite, says, 'It is not just having enough trucks and storerooms...Some organisation has to take responsibility for coordinating donations so the right food reaches people in useable condition.' (2) Education: Create awareness about food labels and other specifications among consumers. Ronni Kahn, CEO of OzHarvest, says, 'Consumers need to understand what date marks mean.' (3) Food consumed at home should have minimal losses and consumer buying and eating behaviors need to be transformed. (4) Growing less food: Ms. Montegriffo says it's counterintuitive but if producers and retailers were not throwing away 1/3 of the food produced, the cost of producing it would drop. If supermarkets did not over-order food, their costs would reduce. (5) UK's model of collaborative understanding and commitment, between environment ministry, sumpermarkets, manufacturers and packaging companies has been effective and can be emulated. (6) Denmark's model with an organization buying surplus food from other supermarkets and selling at discount can also be helpful to reduce food waste. (7) Legislative measures can be considered and that should evolve with deliberations among various stakeholders. A number of organizations in Australia, for example retailers like Woolworths and Coles, and charities like OzHarvest, SecondBite and Foodbank, are currently working towards achieving minimal food wastes through the following 6 methods - (1) Reasonable and achievable long-term targets through diverse strategies like food donations, commercial composting, fertiliser, electricity production and animal feed. (2) Using food charities. (3) Buying ugly fruit and selling at cheaper rates. (4) Supermarkets are ordering less by using supply chain technologies and ordering systems. (5) Good incentives: Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt introduced an incentive for businesses to reduce food or garden waste in landfill. (6) Talking about food waste and seeking collaborative solutions through participation from wide array of public and private organizations. Read on...

The Age: Seven solutions to supermarket food waste
Author: Deborah Gough

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 mar 2016

Harvard University academics, Prof. Mark R. Kramer and Prof. Michael E. Porter, introduced the concept of 'Creating Shared Value (CSV)' in HBR (2011), as an approach that takes into account social problems which intersect with businesses and makes it a major part of the core business strategy of a company. In the context of India the approach is much more relevant as it is still struggling with numerous social issues like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, health etc. The academics feel that Indian businesses are still missing something in their view of long-term sustainabile business models. While speaking at 'Shared Value Summit 2015' in India, Prof. Kramer said, 'You cannot have a successful business in a failing society...for the CSV model to become a part of corporate hygiene anywhere needs major mindset change where we embrace a problem solving approach that goes beyond thinking what we can do in our company alone to also what we can do for society that we operate in.' He further explains that, 'CSV doesn't replace CSR and philanthropy, but can be in addition to them, such that businesses can find new opportunities for competitive advantage by beginning to think about these social issues as part of their overall corporate strategy.' Read on...

Business Insider: Philanthropy and CSR are fine, but Harvard senior fellow Mark Kramer sees CSV as the way forward for a growing and evolving India
Author: Anushree Singh

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 jan 2016

Social entrepreneurship takes initiatives to solve world's complex social problems through creativity, innovation and passion. Education and healthcare are two areas that require huge amount of resources and efforts to improve quality and access. In a number of cases various government, non-government and private organizations have to pool their resources and efforts for better outcomes in education and healthcare. Richard Barth, CEO of KIPP Foundation (US-based Education Social Enterprise), and Jonathan Jackson, Co-founder and CEO of Dimagi (Technology and Healthcare Social Enterprise that operates globally), explain how their two organizations are finding common ground, pooling their expertise and resources, utilizing technology and collaborating to find solutions to uplift their communities. Through their experience the organizations have observed that education and healthcare are substantially connected to each other. They explain, 'Dimagi and KIPP learned that the same child struggling with poor health is often unable to access a good education. There's no single solution that will improve their quality of life, and we can't fully address one challenge at the expense of the other.' This prompted the organizations to invest in each other's areas of expertise. Dimagi is branching out into education, and KIPP is incorporating healthcare into its approach. Since their interactions and relationships with communities in which they operate are central to their work, therefore, their collaboration will play an important role in effective application of solutions. The collaborative and partnership model can be applied by social enterprises working in different areas to maximize their impact and save efforts and resources. Read on...

The Seventy Four: Social Entrepreneurship - Connecting the Worlds of Education and Health Care
Authors: Richard Barth, Jonathan Jackson

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 12 jan 2016

According to US Bureau of Labor Statistics website (bls.gov), 1987 United Nations conference defined sustainable development as, 'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' A report from the National Association for Environmental Management describes sustainability as, 'Company's strategies for acting as a responsible corporate citizen, ensuring its operations are financially sustainable and minimizing its environmental footprint. Sustainability initiatives may include natural resource reduction, supply chain management, worker safety and health initiatives, stakeholder engagement and external reporting.' Sustainability professionals are often employed by companies to achieve their goals by ensuring that their business practices are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. Sustainability is a diverse field and to pursue right careers requires thorough search starting from CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) or sustainability departments of corporations, nonprofit or social startups, or social impact or social consulting firms. But apart from these usual approaches, Katie Kross (Managing Director of the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business), provides some other out of the box ideas for professionals seeking sustainability careers and want to make social impact - (1) Mission-driven brand manager (2) University sustainability director (3) ESG (Environmental-Social-Governance Investing) portfolio analyst (4) CSR account executive for a creative agency (5) Post-graduate intern at an environmental NGO (6) Foundation program officer. Read on...

Triple Pundit: 6 Sustainability Careers That Haven't Occurred to You Yet
Author: Katie Kross

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 dec 2015

U.S. spends a total of US$ 2.8 trillion on healthcare and surprisingly about half of it is spent on just 5% of the general population. To expand healthcare reach the general solution is to spend more money. But Prof. David S. Buck of Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Primary Care Innovation Center (PCIC) in Houston (Texas, US), explains that spending more money, specifically in Harris County, has yielded poor outcomes, no coordination between healthcare providers and no safety net system for those most in need. According to him the healthcare system is non-existent in the region and it is merely a grouping of medical silos. The nonprofit PCIC is working towards creating a true healthcare system to reach the most vulnerable and most medically expensive residents, and provide affordable and better healthcare overall by reducing hospital costs. PCIC is first identifying 'super-utilizers', a small group of patients that are extremely sick and costly. These patients utilize most of the healthcare services and are generally treated in emergency rooms. Health staff after identifying these 'super-utilizers' will work with them individually and develop a treatment and care plan for better management of their health issues. This will finally reduce their hospital emergency visits and lower healthcare costs. Delay in treating small problems leads them to become emergencies and bring inefficiencies in the health system along with increased difficulties to patients. Prof. Buck suggests an integrated database of these patients for timely and effective treatment and care. According to him, 'Developing a safety net takes time, commitment and shared data...If hospitals share data, it won't just improve the institution's bottom line; it'll improve care for the community...We also need school systems to share data, so that we can learn how health and social factors are linked, and improve the health of students and their families.' Read on...

Houston Chronicle: Medical data-sharing could curb cost of 'super-utilizers'
Author: David S. Buck

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 nov 2015

The fast-paced world of fashion and related consumption leads to generation of large amount of waste that leaves a substantial ecological footprint. According to the nonprofit GrowNYC, in the city of New York the average person throws out 46 pounds of clothings and textiles every year (totals 193000 tons for NY). While Council for Textile Recycling found that US generates 25 billion pounds of textile waste per year (82 pounds per person) and estimates that it will increase to 35.4 billion pounds by 2019. But only about 4 billion pounds (15%) gets donated and recycled and the remaining reaches landfills, contributing 5.2% to all trash generated in US. Elizabeth Cline, author of the book "Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion", says 'There is so much waste being created and that has changed really dramatically in the last 15 years with the rise of fast fashion and disposable consumption.' Adam Baruchowitz, CEO of Wearable Collections, which coordinates textile recycling in partnership with GrowNYC, acknowledges the increasing rise in textile waste. While Nate Herman, VP of international trade at American Apparel and Footwear Association, have a contrarian view and explains 'People are actually buying less than they did 10 years. While there has been a lot of press about [wastefulness], the numbers don't bear that out.' But he acknowledges that the industry is trying to effectively handle the clothing's end-of-life issues. Some companies provide small credit to consumers who trade-in used garments, while others donate used clothings to charities. Some companies provide support and contribute to the recycle programs where used textiles end up in producing materials used in other industries like insulation in buildings. Moreover, there are a number of startups that are working to give a second life to used clothings. A small number of fashion companies are also incorporating recycled materials in their new line of clothings. Eco-friendly strategies are considered costly by the industry. According to Jill Dumain, director of environmental strategy at Patagonia, 'It's an industry-wide dilemma, for sure, on how do we do something at scale that the industry can participate in...The end result is that you have smaller-scale production that ends up to be more expensive.' She suggests that awareness about recycling is necessary and at the same time there need to be a thinking among consumers not to treat clothes like a cheap disposable item. Slow fashion might be the way forward. She further explains, 'I do think consumption is a big part. People need to learn how to buy less and companies need to learn how to be profitable in selling less.' Read on...

CBS News: Is the fast fashion industry ready to change its wasteful ways?
Author: Michael Casey

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 nov 2015

Nonprofit organizations intend to bring social change and serve communities by involving themselves in the areas of education, healthcare, environment, poverty alleviation etc. Large number of these organizations are professionally managed and utilize business practices for efficiency and effectiveness to make better impact in the society. Elizabeth Gore, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Dell and Chair of the Global Entrepreneurs Council at United Nations Foundation, explains how working and volunteering in the nonprofit sector benefits individuals and is a viable career option - (1) Since nonprofit sector is an organized industry, individuals with an undergraduate degree in fields like business, engineering etc can pursue master's in nonprofit management and pubic policy. (2) Volunteering gets your foot on the door and provides global experience in a number of areas. (3) You don't have to build your own thing and your game changing charitable idea can be developed by utilizing the infrastructure of the existing nonprofit. It has better chance of success as there are networking opportunities in such an environment. (4) Most national nonprofits and humanitarian groups have an attractive pay structure and value talent. It would be sufficient to cover ones expenses. (5) As the nonprofit industry involves working with committed individuals, it helps in building long-term relationships and lasting friendships. Read on...

Cosmopolitan: 5 Surprising Things to Know About Jobs That Give Back
Authors: Elizabeth Gore, Danielle Kam

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 oct 2015

To transform cities into 'HUBs' of something requires deliberate collaborative efforts and partnerships between the people and government. There are numerous examples from US and around the world where residents, local businesses, city administration, civil society and governments have come together to create ideas and concepts, developed a concrete roadmap, and carefully executed strategy, that lead to the evolution of a city or region to become great at doing something and attract other people, businesses and investments that helped develop and grow its economy. They worked relentlessly as a team towards the shared vision and goal. Kansas City in United States is one such example where the city and its citizens built upon its strength and made it into a hub of 'Social Entrepreneurship.' Josh Schukman (Founder of Social Change Nations), explains five essential elements that helped transform Kansas City and how other cities can replicate and implement this model - (1) Capitalize on the strengths of area universities. (2) Rally local foundations. (3) The effort must be driven by the social entrepreneurs themselves. (4) Embrace the startup culture. (5) Remember this is a long term play. Read on...

Huffington Post: How to Make Your City a Hub For Social Entrepreneurship
Author: Josh Schukman

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