”If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise?”

The answer to this question is the same reason why governments would choose to fund large factories over small dog walking businesses: the scale of the benefit as they see it. Like governments, the UN will choose to fund things that benefit the most people from their perspective. Factories may employ hundreds or thousands of workers, but they will never teach people to be self sufficient and will limit their abilities to ever earn more than a minimum living wage.

Social enterprise and the Arc are ways to truly create shared value by creating clusters and promoting Mohandas Gandhi’s preachings of the value of self-sufficiency. Governments may see value in employing more people–which is a good first step, but these people will likely continue to live in poverty because they will never be enabled to benefit themselves.

Even if the United Nations were fully funded, their overall goals would not change. The United Nations being fully funded would more likely result in additional environmental and political summits than teaching self-sufficiency to people with an entrepreneurial eye but little education. There will always be space for initiatives such as the Arc, the Grameen Bank, and the world views of Gandhi because there is a constant need for innovation worldwide.