Jobseekers to turn job givers
Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has said the primary focus of social businesses for upcoming years would be transforming the unemployed youth into entrepreneurs in every country.
“Social business can help enable jobseekers to become job-givers, thereby generating a virtuous circle of job creation. The changes cannot happen overnight, but we have to multiply the creation of social businesses,” he told the Sixth Global Social Business Summit in Mexico City on Thursday.
The November 27-28 summit, the most important forum for social business worldwide, opened with a call to envision a bold future for social business and create a concrete agenda to bring about transformative changes to the world by 2020.
More than 750 people, including social business practitioners and representatives from companies, academia, governments, civil society and international organisations from 50 countries took part in the event.
The theme of the summit this year is “Shaping Social Business - To Shape the World of 2020”.
Prof Yunus, who fathered the concept of social business, in his keynote speech said: “Social business is one way to create an enabling framework. Our community of innovative social business entrepreneurs around the world are contributing to bringing about a different approach to social problems as they see strength and opportunities where others only see problems.
“We began microcredit in a small village in Bangladesh, but the idea spread all over the world. That is the power of a new idea to change the world. Once we create a tiny social business, we develop a seed. Once we do that, we have to multiply it. Eventually, we can create a plantation,” he added.
Social business, said the Nobel Peace Prize winner, did not undermine the past theories but rather added a “new tool to the toolbox” to help improve the lives of the bottom-most people and unemployed youth.
Ildefonso Guajardo, secretary of economy of Mexico, said it was a great honour for Mexico to host the summit for the first time in the Americas.
He observed that even though globalisation had brought about GDP growth, increased export and progress in the country, it had also essentially created two Mexicos: one that had benefited from the open economy and another condemned to poverty and increasing injustice.
He said social business could help address the problems of globalisation, as instead of taking wealth and creating more wealth, it "goes where there is no wealth and seeks to bring changes to people's lives".
Enrique Jacob Rocha, president of the Instituto Nacional del Emprendedor (INADEM), one of the partners of the global event, said: “There is no doubt of the importance of social entrepreneurs as catalysers of the economy since they are the most powerful force for transformative social change, capable of complex problems, such as poverty, health, access to technology and environmental issues.”
Hans Reitz, head of GSBS and co-founder of the Grameen Creative Lab, argued that there was still a massive challenge to convincing old successful North American companies to join the social business movement.
“We need people from middle-management and young people to push the boundary. My message is simple: keep the pressure going, don't stop, don't get tired,” he added.
The welcome and keynote speeches were followed by an inspiring orchestra performance from the Landfill Harmonic, a group of adolescents from a poor community living near the largest landfill in Paraguay. All the musical instruments of the group, including cellos and violins, were made of waste from the landfill.
In the following session, a delegation from Bangladesh comprising leaders of different enterprises of Grameen and Yunus Centre, shared their experiences of promoting social business in Bangladesh.
M Shahjahan, acting director of Grameen Bank; Parveen Mahmud, managing director of Grameen Telecom Trust; SM Huzzatul Islam Latifee, managing director of Grameen Trust; spoke, among others.
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