Social enterprise and Arc Initiative

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What is social enterprise?

Social enterprise is to use business tools and methods, such as business management, to achieve social objectives. It is not like a charity, because the social enterprise can also gain profits. However, the social enterprise does not pursue to maximize profits like most companies do, it mainly focus on bringing benefits to people and dealing with the social issues. Through running the social enterprise, the social entrepreneurs can create both social and business value. For example, social enterprise can provide personal services for people, like baby-sitting to satisfy the social needs of this kind of service.

What is the Arc?

The Arc Initiative is to build a bridge to exchange knowledge and experiences through internship and workshop. It involves initiating and fostering relationship between communities in Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Colombia. For example, people can get business skills from other communities and then apply and take back these skills to their home countries. Jeff Kroeker, Sauder accounting instructor and Arc co-creator, said, “Arc provides a unique platform to fuse this [business] education with entrepreneurs in developing countries with the goal of building capacity, building relationships and ultimately, building a better future.” Arc has such strong power indeed.

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

As I just mentioned above, the main goal of social enterprise is not to maximize profit. Social enterprise is mainly about promoting social-interest, solving social problems and improving the society. If the United Nations was fully funded, social entrepreneurs can also start their social enterprises, because they are not in conflict and social enterprise is not primarily for money. Social entrepreneurs can find the social issues which affect people’s life the most, and then they uses social entrepreneurship to organize, create and start a social enterprise to deal with the social issues, improve our society and our living environment, and achieve their social objectives ultimately. The society needs this kind of social enterprise to help change our living environment. Also, Arc is a unique partnership for global communities to share their knowledge and business skills. If the United Nations was fully funded, we should pay more attention on social problems and global expansion, but not on maximizing profits and making money. Arc can expand the business circle and build a bridge in the global market. It can bring more opportunities to the global market as well. Therefore, if the United Nations was fully funded, we need the Arc to expand and connect global market and build a relationship between communities; we also need social enterprise to deal with social issues to improve our society.

Reference:

“What is social entrepreneurship?”

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

“Arc Initiative”

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative

 

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