Week 10 - CURE TO UNEMPLOYMENT

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Unemployment is not only a serious economic issue but it is also poses to be a huge social problem. A country's unemployment rate is a social problem because it affects a large number of people within a community but has the potential to be alleviated by efforts from a separate coalition of individuals.Who might these individuals be? They are none other than social entrepreneurs.

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A social entrepreneur for more than 20 years, Collin Crooks published a couple of articles on unemployment and the positive effect social entrepreneurship has on possibly solving this crisis. On his own website TreeShepherd.com - nurturing local solutions, he wrote this: "Inevitable economic processes create ever more desperate ghettoes of unemployment of people with low skills or complex commitments. So how do we reverse the trend and create low and semi-skilled local jobs? Enter social enterprise. Social enterprises are perverse. They deliberately choose to locate in challenging areas and are three times more likely to be based in an area of multiple disadvantage and high unemployment than their private sector equivalent (SEUK 2011).  And relative to a similar sized private firm they employ more people." (Crooks, 2012, para. 7-8).

OK, a part of me when reading what Crooks had written could not help but wonder... If social enterprises are doing so much, including hiring more people to help the issue of unemployment as compared to a private firm of the same size and capacities, the social enterprise as an entity would have to cover so much more expenses than an ordinary firm and this could in turn lead to the inability to sustain itself in the long run. Even more so if the social enterprise has to compete with other ordinary firms. This is where the government and authorities should step in and provide aid to social enterprises because if not, they're competing in an unfair game - winning socially but losing profitably.

Then I came across an article in The Guardian written by Crooks three months after the previously mentioned article by him. In it, what was written served as the perfect follow up to where we left off ... how social enterprises can help society's issues like unemployment and also the need for aid from governments and other larger organisations.

"But to do it on the scale that is needed we need to do two things: Firstly, we need to recruit more social entrepreneurs. To do this we need to work directly with those local people who do have ideas and can provide services and give them the tools to enable them to make the difference. Secondly, we need to persuade councils and businesses to buy services from social enterprises as a defined part of their general spend. My challenge therefore to government, local government and business is to spend 5% of their procurement budget in areas of high deprivation and critically with companies dedicated to creating work for the people that live there even where they if that commitment was made it would be possible to establish the businesses to meet the demand." (Crooks, 2012, para. 9).

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With the two above needs being met, social enterprises will truly live up to its cause for existence. And true enough, just a couple of days ago, the new year brought about great news for Spain. Spanish social entrepreneurs are making great change in their country amidst all the economic and political issues that are still apparent there. "With all eyes on its government finances and rate of unemployment, the dominant view of Spain is that it will be in dire economic straits for a long time to come. Few people know that there is also a flip side: new forms of social innovation and a range of social approaches to business are to taking root in Spain's economic and political fissures." (Rebel, 2013, para.1). There is still much hope for the country though.

In the growing social enterprise sector of Spain, there are many different entrepreneurial spirits coming together trying to form something innovative that would help to rebuild Spain's economy. All of these look to solving the most crucial Spanish social issues, such as widespread youth unemployment and an aging population that depends heavily on purely their state pensions. One such success story is the Spanish co-operative MONDRAGON. For more information on this upcoming world leader in the co-operative movement, as well as the seventh largest business group Spain has, click on the link below. MONDRAGON is an extremely relevant example of how social enterprises not only develop an economy, but put a stop to unemployment too.

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The MONDRAGON Cooperative Experience: Humanity at Work

References

Crooks, C. (2012, July 25). Social enterprise and the unemployment crisis. In TreeShepherd. Retrieved on 5th January 2013, from http://www.treeshepherd.org.uk/social-enterprise-and-the-unemployment-crisis/

Crooks, C. (2012, October 12). Thinking positively about solving the unemployment crisis. In theguardian. Retrieved on 5th January 2013, from http://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/2012/oct/12/thinking-positively-solving-unemployemnt-crisis

Rebel, C. (2013, January 2). Spain's entrepreneurs carving a new path amid economic crisis. In theguardian. Retrieved on 5th January 2013, from http://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/2013/jan/02/spain-enterpreneurs-economic-enterprise-cooperative