Just as entrepreneurs change the face of business, social entrepreneurs change the face for society, seizing opportunities missed by other people to improve business itself, build strong and sustainable organizations and invent new approaches. Nowadays, more and more entrepreneurs jump into this social enterprise, pursuing poverty alleviation goals with entrepreneurial zeal.
Tom shoes is one of the companies that concentrate on this social entrepreneurship. Its business model is “buy one, give one-buy a pair and the California-based company will give a pair to a child in need”. And based on this principle, the company helps hundreds of thousands children in need. In my opinion, however, this one-for-one model only solves the surface problems but not deal with the root causes.
Source: http://www.ban-ma.com/index.php/discover/r-1612.html
Although the one-for-one model do help children in poor countries, at the same time, it will bring some negative impacts on these regions. On one hand, one-for-one model definitely has an impact on the local economy, suppressing the development of local business, such as shoe stores. On the other hand, this action will cultivate dependency of these children. It will make these children think that even though they do not work, they can still get free things and therefore these children will get wrong guidance and it is not good for their growth.
I definitely admit that one-for-one business model is a fabulous idea and has a good incentive, but to make its better, lots of works needed to be done. To go beyond one-for-one, Tom shoes can build manufacturing factories in those poor regions, giving people who in need opportunities to get jobs. And this action can actually boosts the local economy. There’s an old Chinese saying, ” Teach people to fish instead of just giving them fish”. Therefore, to help these children and ensure that they can make a living by themselves, Tom shoes need to teach them how to make money by themselves instead of just giving them shoes.