About Us

Whether a social enterprise is in education, healthcare or waste management, its main goal is to develop solutions to the problem of the society and the environment. Hence, social innovation, continuous learning, discipline and value communication are desirable qualities for social enterprises and social entrepreneurship.

For social entrepreneurship, innovation does not necessarily mean invention. While inventions usually focus on creating new features on a particular product which can often go out-of-date, innovation refers to a much broader range of tweaks and twists. Social innovation can take the form of new products and services, new production base and distribution channels or even new revenue model and teaming structure. It is quite amazing that, sometimes, minor adjustments to current business practices can create a sustainable and scalable impact to the society and environment.

Starting an operation in social business is a demanding task as it requires the social entrepreneurs to navigate with dual objectives of creating positive social impacts while maintaining financial sustainability of the operations. Thus, it is a learning process which involves continuously coming up with more effective ways of addressing a poorly met or unmet needs, testing and fine-tuning of the initial idea, reallocating resources to the right solutions and improving the model through feedbacks from key stakeholders.

Like any other business, a social enterprise’s operation incus costs while trying to achieve its mission. As a result, it needs to generate revenue to cover the costs of its operation. Financial disciplines such as cost control and phasing of investments are necessary tools to ensure sustainability of the social enterprise. Additionally, once the enterprise becomes more established, with teams and collaboration from various stakeholders, it will be required to have strong accountability/governance, disciplined auditing and result measuring system.

Most social entrepreneurs started out their businesses with the passion to create a better world. However, passion alone is not enough. Only by having a clear social objective and consistent communication of the company’s mission, will they be able to convince consumers to believe in their products as well as what their company stands for. Social entrepreneurs also need to be reminded that, while trying to solve the world’s problems, creating a “better world” inside the enterprise is equally important. Therefore, social entrepreneurs need to communicate and practice values such as access to opportunity, transparency, equity, and empowerment within their own teams.

From our interviews with our inspirational leaders, we were able to come up with five key attributes to getting more young generation’s involvement in sustainable development— building awareness, leading by example, providing opportunities, understanding and providing guidance.

Awareness is the first step of advocating. We believe that once young generation are aware of current and future social problems, they will discover the passion and engage themselves in this area. Hence, they can become true advocators of sustainable development.

Passion can be found from multiple sources. Other than the awareness of social problems, passion can be found through experience sharing. By seeing what has been done by the generations before them, and by understanding the lives of their role models, young generation can realize that the opportunities in sustainable development and social entrepreneurship is borderless.

Opportunities in this case do not only mean a platform for young generation to showcase their passion, or opportunities to access angel investors, but also refer to openness for trials and errors by young generation.

Young generation can perceive the world very differently from the older generation. Their creativity and solutions may, therefore, seem implausible or unrealistic at first. Rather than ruling them out, older generation need to open their minds and try to understand these new approaches

While young generation are full of passion, energy and creativity, these qualities do not replace the value of hands-on experiences. Sharing learnings from lifelong efforts of the older generation can help navigate young generation entrepreneurs through avoidable pitfalls and increase their chances of success