“I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.”
- Muhammad Yunus
Hi guys, today I had an interesting evening here in Kuala Lumpur. I was earlier today invited by myHarapan [ the youth foundation ] to a networking event where representatives of Yunus Social Business all the way from Germany were giving talks and share their experience and know-how on social business. Rather than social enterprise, social business is where it is non-loss and non-dividend.
It is here where you are maximizing profits and the profits are rolled over so that you can use the capital accumulated/raised/gained to assist and help contribute in developing the society's economic development.
Where there is strong society, would lead to strong economy.
I thought it was rather interesting. I was not clear beforehand of the purpose of the function, but I am glad I attended the event. It was insightful, to say the least. I have often been curious and passionate with social business or as they call it, becoming social entrepreneurs.
But wait, you do know who is Muhammad Yunus, right? He's the Founder of Grameen Bank [wikipedia: Grameen Bank. Click here!].
What makes it more interesting, is the fact that you are practicing capitalism [Capitalism, to me, is a way of business] but rather than capitalism as portrayed by the pessimists that it spurs evil and greed, in this context, to my understanding, capitalism is being leveraged as a mean to promote social business.
When you've decided to pursue social business instead of business which only emphasized on yourself and profits, you are not becoming NGO or charities. You are making money but your focus is not placed on you, but the people and the world around you.
After the representatives had completed their presentation, I had the opportunity to network with other local social entrepreneurs who have their fair share of contribution to this country. I am very impressed..indeed! I am at awe and makes me even more enthusiastic about implementing mine more aggressively.
As for mine, I'll be updating the project's progress and updates through one of the links at the top [shall be provided later, by next week! - Promise!].
Anyway, that's for now. I'll write soon enough!
Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Clive
P.s. Quick facts - some of the things I've learned from the function.
- Grameen Bank has distributed around $11,000,000,000.00 [11 bil !] worth of micro-funding and 97% are women and the repayment rate stands at 96.4%!
- This is an example of social business founded in Germany. Click here!
- Click here to know more about Grameen Bank.
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