It’s better to teach the hungry to feed themselves than to simply give them food

Nino Arveladze

“The world financial crisis brought private entrepreneurs backwards, while new type enterprises are continuing to operate”, declared the head of Eastern Middlesboro consortium Douglas Saucecomb while discussing social entrepreneurship that is a novelty both Georgia and whole world.

In almost every country in the world there is a saying that it’s better to teach a hungry feed themselves than just give them food. Social industry is a new world approach of how this saying might be put into practice. Eurasia Cooperation Fund, British Council and Centre for Strategic Researches and development of Georgia conducted a presentation of joint program on the subject – “Development of social entrepreneurship in Georgia” in Sheraton Metekhi Palace. Social entrepreneurship is not focused on profit; therefore it is necessary to precisely and properly inform civil society about essence of business and its goals, so that it became clear why some person should be social entrepreneur and not just entrepreneur.

rganizers of the presentation spoke about social entrepreneurship and declared that it has a huge potential to considerably contribute to the economic development and reduction of poverty in the country. However, the term of social entrepreneurship is not described in the legislation of Georgia, but it should be admitted that even developed countries have no similar description in their legislations. Authors of the idea declare that social entrepreneurship is highly honourable business and the government should be interested in its development as it allows finding solutions to unsolved social problems of the population in various regions of the country.
The director of Eurasia Cooperation Fund Keti Vashakidze declared that the organization is a local fund operating in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and its main mission is to increase participation and responsibility of the citizens and separate groups to influence those ongoing social and economic changes in Georgia and whole region.
Social entrepreneurship is highly developed in Great Britain, where both governmental sector and business support its development. Keti Vashakidze reckons that development of this concept is of considerable importance to Georgia. Moreover, under the conditions when there are such organizations in the country that could have called themselves social entrepreneurs.
Social entrepreneurship is such type of entrepreneurship that bears strong social mission and is directed to the solution of the problems; at the same time, it uses business tactics and is oriented to profit; the profit gained is not distributed among owners, but is directed toward achievement of social missions. Deputy Director of British Council, Maia Kipshidze declared that Department of third sector has been establish at cabinet council of GB, the aim of which will be encouragement of social entrepreneurship. The department is directly subjected to Prime Minister.
Program Manager of Eurasia Cooperation Fund, Victor Baramia spoke of their plans. He noted that social entrepreneurship is an idea and concept that is based on two criteria: first, social enterprise has clear social goal and second, income gained by the organization is spent on realization of the set social goals. There are quite a number of socially unsecured people in Georgia. Social enterprise has big capability to fight against poverty; it employs part of the population that cannot find own place in the current reality.
Organizers of the meeting declare that with the development of social entrepreneurship, Georgia non-governmental organization become steadier, as today, the only way for them to attract financial resources is grants. While, social enterprise might replace grants.
The head of Eastern Middlesboro consortium Clifford Douglas Saucecomb declared that social enterprise helps trade and business. A question arises – why some person gets involved in business? – Of course, to gain profit, while population suffers from social problems. Every social enterprise is characterised with string values. Social enterprises and non-governmental organizations are standing close to each other. Social enterprise is considered as cooperation movement with non-governmental sector. There is a difference between social and private enterprises – their management. Social enterprise is a new business. We are standing at the beginning of a long way and do not know how to manage it.
It seems that everything is quite vague. It is important whether Georgian civil society gets interested in the new approach of the world and how far Georgian entrepreneur might realize that its profit is more important than money? Therefore, we reckon to overview history of social enterprises in the world.
The aim of social
entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is an activity of social entrepreneur. Social entrepreneur is the third person that recognizes social problems and bases on entrepreneurial principles in organization, creation and management of his activity so that to reach social changes. The typical business entrepreneur measures his activity by profit, while social entrepreneur measures its success by positive influence of his activities on a society.
Main aim of social entrepreneurship is to improve social and ambient conditions. Social enterprise is a business model that unifies profitable business with the institution of social values. European social entrepreneurs reckon that in 21st century, re-evaluation and re-definition of entrepreneurship will be made based on this progressive business-model.
History of social
entrepreneurship
Terms “social entrepreneur” and “social enterprise” has initially used in the literature about social changes in 1960-1970YY. These terms were put into wide application in 1980-1990YY. This was encouraged by Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka – inventors for the society. In 1980Y, Daniel Bell, the professor at Harvard University described his social entrepreneurship as “the most successful social entrepreneur of the world”; he has founded over sixty organizations all over the world, including School of Social Entrepreneurs in United Kingdom.
Lord Mauson is another British social entrepreneur, who gained his title for outstanding service of his activity in 2007 – he has founded social enterprise in Eastern London.
World’s new approach – Social entrepreneurship
For years the international development industry has been going either big or small. On the one hand, there were big infrastructural and financial projects. Such projects funded the building roads, damns, and telecom stations, or provided developing countries with financial resources at times of need or crisis. On the other hand, there were smaller microfinance projects that provided people in developing countries with funds for subsistence of their farms or other small businesses that they had.
Today, we see the emergence of a different trend in international development. Rather than going big or small, some organizations advocate going in the middle by assisting citizens in developing countries in building their own successful and self-sustainable businesses. What is needed here is sharing entrepreneurial and business knowledge and skills and providing entrepreneurs in developing countries with start-up funds. The entrepreneurs will take it from there.
This approach has come to be known as social entrepreneurship and rapidly became a trendy – and most importantly, effective – way to address global poverty. A number of social entrepreneurship organizations have achieved remarkable results with this philosophy and are leading the way in enabling poverty-stricken populations with self-sufficient ways to promote prosperity.
Endeavor
Endeavor supports emerging-market entrepreneurs through a rigorous process of selection and guidance. Every-six months Endeavor scouts the world for potentially high-impact ventures by entrepreneurs in developing countries. Endeavor then supports selected entrepreneurs with specialized programs in business plan and strategy development, personalized mentoring, management workshops, and networking. This model turned Endeavor into a bright success. To-date, 25,583 jobs have been created by Endeavor entrepreneurs and Endeavor entrepreneurs generated $1 billion in revenue.
Ashoka
Established by a highly regarded change-maker Bill Drayton, Ashoka envisions a world where everyone is a change-maker and promotes a three-tier strategy to the success of this vision. Ashoka supports social entrepreneurs across the world and helps them succeed, builds networks of entrepreneurs and develops patterns of effective collaboration. In addition, Ashoka provides social entrepreneurs with access to social finances and bridges them to business and academic sectors.
Acumen Fund
Created in 2001 with seed capital from the Cisco Systems Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and three individual philanthropists, the Acumen Fund is a global non-profit venture fund using entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty. The Acumen Fund works to build financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable, critical goods and services to the betterment of the lives of the poor. Through the work of the fund, 5 million Tanzanians have been protected from malaria, 3,500 Pakistani squatters housed in secure communities, and 7,000 Indian farmers gained access to irrigation.
TechnoServe
Founded in 1968 by Connecticut businessman Ed Bullard, TechnoServe identifies entrepreneurs in emerging markets and develops them through training, mentoring and networking. TechnoServe also provides access for entrepreneurs to relevant and applicable market information. It guides entrepreneurs in the process of building managerial capacity, developing business plans, raising financing and penetrating markets.