Social Entrepreneurship and the Steps Towards Social Mentality

Thoughts and Notes from Social Innovation Summit 2018 in Stuttgart, Germany

 

Social Innovation Summit is a conference organized by socentbw, an organization that brings together companies with a focus on social entrepreneurship. The purpose of the conference is to unite the social entrepreneurs under one roof, allowing them to share their creative initiatives and to learn from each other. It was an inspiring place to be, seeing all the social entrepreneurs following their initiatives with such passion and dedication. We participated at the conference presenting Yellow Umbrella, our agency, which focuses on experience design for social sector and, in general, ethical projects that benefit people and the environment.

Before I jump into the highlights of the conference and the projects that caught my attention the most, I’d like to talk a bit about social entrepreneurship, what it is, and how this type of gatherings help the social initiatives.

 

Social entrepreneurship allows startups and organizations to create new initiatives, projects, and processes, but within the framework of finding solutions for social, cultural, or environmental issues. I once worked on a project with the Ashoka team in their headquarters in Washington DC, and that must have been my first proper encounter with the definition of social entrepreneurship. Ashoka is an international organization, founded in 1980, with a goal of empowering individuals, who are motivated to find solutions to social problems and make changes to society. The topics, on which the Ashoka social entrepreneurs work, range from education, child protection, and wildlife conservation to domestic violence, energy conservation, and nutrition. Their stories are inspirational: how Gonzalo Munoz brought new pathways of understanding recycling to Chile and several other South American countries, leading to 17,000 tons of materials channeled into the recycling industry, or how Ahmad Edilbi created a web platform to mobilize the Syrian diaspora to become a support network for refugees by providing jobs and other opportunities. Ashoka is just one of the organizations that is dedicated to supporting such initiatives by providing fellowships and an extended network.

 

Social Innovation Summit brought together such entrepreneurs to allow them to get access to information about investments, funding, and network for initiatives dedicated to the benefit of humanity and the environment. The participants were mainly startups, focused on building sustainable products, ethical supply chain processes, empowerment through technology, and others. The following are some of the projects and talks that caught my attention the most:

 

Battiayo – a Nepalese social enterprise that empowers local women to create beautiful and artistic bags and accessories. This was not presented by one of the speakers but one of the conference participants, who shared her story. The company was founded by a German lady, who moved to Nepal, decided to stay there, and founded a company that empowers women to share their handmade creations. Her goal is to share the stories of these women and their creations with wider markets.

 

Eliya Tea Project – production and distribution of ethically sourced and sustainably cultivated Ceylon tea. The tea sales allow the organization to support social and ecological development projects in Sri Lanka.

Shiftphones – ethically produced cell phones, with proper and fully transparent production chain, free of conflict material, and fully modular – to give full control to users. It’s a family business without investors, with limited budget for advertising, marketing, and even personal profits. It’s quite inspiring how they don’t aspire to grow exponentially and take over the big cell phone makers, but to keep it steady and make sure their values and principles are properly executed.

 

Blockchain technologies for social change: A big part of the conference was dedicated to blockchain technology, and how it can be used in social projects. Some notable examples include:

• Alice, a UK based startup that wants to apply blockchain technology for social funding. This will ensure that the funding truly reaches the people who it is intended for, by means of providing data transparency for each step of the funding progression.
• Ambrosus, a startup that aims at bringing transparency to food and medicine production through blockchain, by, similarly, adding details of where all the ingredients come from and where they reach.
• Impak Bank, a startup that focuses on investments into social projects, using blockchain.

 

A talk about tech for refugees (another take on all this tech created for social benefit) highlighted some of the reasons why many technologies created to help refugees in Germany failed: a) there were too many projects and, even, in competition with each other; b) not enough resources, c) not enough understanding of the audience.

I suppose this is a good example of how experience design can truly make a difference, especially in the social sector. Understanding the people and creating solutions for what they really need can truly be life changing.

 

For those who are not very involved in the social entrepreneurship community (including myself), at times these initiatives may seem just creative ideas of a bunch of motivated individuals – amazing things they talk about, but which seem hard and unattainable. Can sustainable products really become a part of our daily reality? We may think that they are expensive and won’t catch up; that we need to accept the reality, even if it means not bothering with recycling, meat production, or energy efficiency. In many countries, societies, and neighborhoods it’s the absolute reality.

However, our power is in collective mind, and, with a mentality shift, we can switch to sustainability with a goal of creating a more equal society and curb our over-usage of the resources. Because without our collective effort the endeavors of social entrepreneurs won’t be fruitful.

Here is my take on the path to sustainability: our journey through learning and adoption of a more social mentality.

• Learn: The first step is knowledge – knowing what products are out there, what changes they bring, why, and how your involvement would help is the start.
• Value: Learning is the first step, but to truly adapt we need to value the social projects and appreciate their purpose.
• Adopt: Adopting a sustainable mentality means looking at products with a different perspective and choosing the sustainable alternatives whenever it is possible. For example, using sustainably sourced coffee ensures that the people who plant and grow coffee are given fair salaries, vacation days, etc., which leads to a more fair and equal society (e.g. Blyss grows and sustainably cultivates cocoa).
• Invest & Advocate: Becoming invested in social projects leads one to become an advocate of such projects and share the learnings and knowledge.
• Contribute: This is probably the stage of majority of social entrepreneurs, who not only believe in projects for the benefit of humanity, but contribute, by pursuing their ideas and bringing new solutions to social issues.

 

I am probably still on the Value stage, as I slowly start to understand and appreciate the social projects and see what I can do myself to learn more, adopt, and advocate. Given that our society is constructed of interrelated social networks, where we learn from each other and follow the general trends, means that every contribution we make is a step towards affecting the collective mentality change and making every individual care a bit more. The products that I outlined above are just a tiny-tiny percentage of all the social initiatives out there. I believe, it is important to learn about them and share, to go beyond the Knowledge step to follow the journey to social mentality, a path to saving our world.