The UN is an international organization of 193 member states. According to the Charter, found at www.un.org, it has four main goals all members work towards;

1)    Maintaining international peace and security

2)    Developing friendly relations among nations

3)    Cooperating in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights

4)    Being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.

By upholding these beliefs, it helps resolve international conflicts and formulates policies on matters affecting the entire world. However, even if it were fully funded, I believe the UN would not be as effective in dealing with some of the issues in particular countries as the Arc initiative or social enterprise would, as it is simply too large.

With a focus on the exchange of knowledge and business skills, the Arc Initiative at the Sauder School of Business sends students over to communities in South Africa, Ethiopia, Colombia and Rwanda. Through internships and workshops, they are directly immersed in the businesses they are trying to help. This would give them a specific understanding of the organization, and the problems it faces. A company would be much better benefited through this initiative as opposed to through the UN, which has its own broad goals and lacks focus. An organization that large would often misallocate funds, and have difficulty communicating with those they are trying to help due to lack of understanding.

Similarly, social entrepreneurs target a specific problem their country/community faces and works to solve it in a mission driven, strategic way. They specialize in a particular problem they understand very well, perhaps as a result of actually facing or having faced its consequences. Thus, any resources acquired will be used wisely and effectively.

Every morning, I wake to the grinding of cranes and beeping of trucks outside my window; the construction crew have begun their day. For two months now, they have been building UBC’s new Vantage College out of what used to be an old parking lot. This two towered building, costing the university more than $127 million, will soon be home to 1000 international students who are to be part of UBC’s latest attempt to improve English skills while graduating on time. With a tuition cost of more than $50,000, only those whose families are affluent can afford to attend at all, and Canadian students need not apply. As CBC states, many students are upset with this usage of their tuition money, and believe that Vantage College will only create an elitist group who will not be fully integrated with the rest of the community. They also speculate that this is a scheme to create more revenue for the university. I believe that as an institute of higher education, the university has the right to value profit, however it should also strive to contribute to its own country. Those who have recently become Canadian citizens and need help with English cannot become Vantage College students, although they hope to live their lives here, and contribute to the Canadian economy. Instead, the College draws in people who are not planning on staying in this country, and uses them as an opportunity to earn money for itself.

Facts and figures from: http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-s-vantage-college-canadians-need-not-apply-1.2826142

In the spirit of the Halloween season, I recently stumbled upon Kyle Chayka’s blog “The Halloween Industrial Complex” in which he describes the amount of money Americans spend on all things “Halloween”. The National Retail Federation (NRF) reports a total of $2.79 billion spent on costumes alone, not to mention $2.23 billion in candy, and even more in decorations. One reason why such a large amount of money is spent on this seasonal celebration is due to the fact that Halloween appeals to people of all ages. At the early toddler stage, children enjoy dressing up as their favourite TV characters, teenagers get a kick out of being something they’re not for a night, and adults buy costumes to entertain their children. Even pets these days are being given a Halloween makeover. These days, people are increasingly choosing to buy costumes rather than make them themselves due to the lack of time, especially when Halloween falls on a weekday. Thus, anyone in the costume business is bound to have a large customer segment, especially since Halloween has a large focus on the costume aspect, unlike other seasonal celebrations. Near the end of October, stores begin to stock up on costumes of all sizes, candy, fake blood and spider webs. However, the inventory piles up, and anything left over after the 31^st ends up sitting in the back until next year. This can be disadvantageous due to the space it takes up, and the risk of it going out of fashion. Thus, Halloween is a celebration that can be extraordinarily profitable for store owners, however, care must be taken to estimate demand and manage inventory levels accordingly.

FIFA recently released their men’s shortlists for the Ballon d’Or award of 2014, and to many astonished football fans, ex Liverpool player Luis Suárez was not among the named. Despite having scored 31 goals with Liverpool in the past season, being named best player in the Premier League, as well as top scorer in the South American section during the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign, Suárez did not make it onto the list of 23 best male players in the world. There are many speculations as to why this is so. Did the inclusion of Javier Mascherano mean FIFA already had their full of South Americans who moved from Liverpool to Barcelona? Was FIFA offended by his latest appearance in a Uruguayan TV advert, in which he causes trouble in an office environment? Or was it, as mirror.co.uk claims, because of the biting incident during the FIFA World Cup 2014 match against Italy after which he was banned from all football related activity for 4 months?

No matter what the reason, I believe it’s safe to assume that Suárez was not included in the shortlist due to something that had no relation to his extraordinary performance on the pitch. The fact that FC Barcelona recently signed Suárez for a five-year deal at a transfer fee of £75m (the third biggest in football history) shows that his skill is evidently worthy of recognition. With his exclusion from the best in the world, we can see a flaw in FIFA’s reward system. Evidently, this is an organization created for the love of the sport, and should reward its players based on their performance rather than political issues. But instead of providing recognition where recognition is due, FIFA decides to leave him out from the list of elites and upset football fans around the world.