Gala Spirit | |
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Early since Nobel Prize winner Professor Yunus helped poor people in Bangladesh using micro-finance, social enterprise is commonly regarded as a new approach to solve social problems in various fields, such as poverty, hunger, public health, education and pollution, etc. Indeed, the scalability and sustainability of social enterprises can be strengthened if they earn profits while maintain the vision of creating social value. Compared to the traditional charity donations, social enterprises are able to create sustained social impacts; compared to the government policies for economic development, enterprises are distinctively more efficient in delivery; compared to the volunteering work, social enterprises are more successful in empowering the community to solve their own challenges. Possessing these unique advantages, social enterprises start to prevail all around the world, growing into a new power in bettering the society. For future social entrepreneurs, humanity care functions as their momentum, innovation serves as their source of advantages, and sustainability enables social entrepreneurs to maximize an enterprises’ positive influence on the society. Social enterprises are similar to Commonwealth Organizations in that both of them carry the objective to serve the society. They concern on social issues; they are willing to take care of the unprivileged groups. Also, certain social issues and environmental problems disturb both of them. As firm supporters for realizing social impact through enterprises, we feel that things should not be this way. Our society has great room to improve, as long as changes are made appropriately. However, with our passion, how do we play our role in developing social enterprises? Innovation is always needed to help develop an enterprise and reform the old market. Generally, we need two types of innovation, technological innovation and business model innovation. Technological innovation means replacing old technologies with new ones to expand production and reduce cost to serve the traditionally underserved communities. Take technological innovation in renewable energy as an example: the old fossil fuels are being replaced with new energy sources. This is a direct result of technological innovation. Furthermore, in the field of Business, microfinance is introduced as a way of innovation. Before, banks don’t give loans to people with low income or low income. However, by introducing microfinance into the banking system, Professor Yunus revolutionized the field of new financing. The poor are not only made accessible to loans, but also supported by entrepreneurship education. As a result, they obtained the skills to rid themselves of poverty, pay the debts and regain confidence in living a good life. Sustainable developments in fields such as environment, organization, society and economics are all very important. In order for social enterprises and public institutions to successfully generate social value, they should, over a long-term, be run in a sustainable way. Small changes can be accumulated and finally cast revolutionary influence on critical issues. Therefore, instead of working on an ad-hoc project basis, social enterprises should develop its sustainable model to operate. Now, as Chinese international students are becoming a major force of provoking positive social changes in China, transnational enterprises and commonwealth associations organized by them begin to emerge across China and the US. With their great passion and global vision, they contribute a significant portion in the fields of education, environment and public welfare. However, though those student entrepreneurs are passionate, they lack the experience of putting their plan into practice. Unfamiliar with business models and inaccessible to types of resources, those student leaders may encounter difficulty in realizing their dreams. We believe that a platform with professional knowledge of every field can help them with the current difficulties as soon as possible, and as a result, enable them to realize greater social impact. On April 25, U.S. West Coast time, Berkeley Chinese Students and Scholars Association will hold “Realize the impact: Social Entrepreneurs”, a banquet for social innovators. During the banquet, we will invite Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, Bay Area universities professors, famous non-profit organizations and student leaders to explore the way to develop transnational social enterprises and public organizations. At the same time, we will showcase some of the student-founded social enterprises and commonweal organizations, which aim to address problems in education, environment and public welfare issues. "We support you" (Realize the Impact: Social Entrepreneurs!) has a couple of meanings:
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