Week 8 - ONE YEAR

For this post, I would like to talk about this year's Poly Forum and how it has varied so much from last year's Poly Forum which I had attended. I did not get the opportunity to go for Poly Forum this year (would have loved to though!) but my good friend's sister attended it and spoke a great deal on the exciting line up they had planned for them throughout the two weeks of this tertiary event.

Image from www.polyforum.edu.sg

The theme for Poly Forum 2011 was Our Singapore Dream, and the sub themes were the new revised 5Cs for Singapore -  Career, Comfort, Children, Culture and Charity. There is greater emphasis on what a Singaporean should be like, with the new 5Cs being a response to the changing trends of this century in Singapore. They are to replace the original 5Cs of Cash, Car, Credit Card, Condominium and Country Club that used to be the popular conventional aspirations of a Singaporean in the past.

This was a part of an article written by Mark Lim, one of the facilitators for the subtheme of Children; "we discussed at length the importance of building character in our children. The discussion was sparked by the Education Minister, who in a major speech, called for the education system to be re-examined. He is now pushing for values and character education to take centrestage in the education of our young. At the closing ceremony, Mr Heng shared passionately why civics and moral education should not be sidelined in favour of mathematics and other "core" subjects.

He instead spelt out his own version of the 5Cs - Creativity, Collaboration, Conviction, Character and Contribution. The Minister's comments are indeed one of the most refreshing in recent times. I agree with him that values and character should constitute the bedrock of a child's education. Without such a firm foundation, the house of cards will crumble. So many of the youths-at-risk whom I've had the opportunity to meet fall under this category, young people who were brought up not by principles but by pragmatics. I truly hope Minister Heng's policy is implemented well" (Lim, 2011, para.6).

I love how Minister Heng Swee Keat is trying to make such great changes in the Singapore education system here. It will groom such wonderful human beings and leaders of Singapore's future. While that was what formed the basis for the whole two weeks of discussions and plenary sessions of Poly Forum during my time, the overall theme for Poly Forum 2012 was My Singapore - Our Story. The subthemes included Economy, Education, Environment, Identity, Security & Stability. It suddenly moved towards the issues that Singapore as a whole faced as an emerging global city.

Image from www.polyforum.edu.sg

So, one might ask how this relates back to social entrepreneurship. Well, so much has changed in just a year for Singapore, and for us at BZSE. Just imagine how different life could be a couple of years down the road... Life could change for the better, or for the worst. It is truly up to us, to work together - we as BZSE students have the chance to be changemakers for the betterment of the future.

 

"The new 5Cs of a Singaporean - Creativity, Collaboration, Conviction, Character and Contribution." - Minister Heng Swee Keat

References

Lim, M. (2011, September 27). A dream for the future of our children. Parenting on purpose. Retrieved on 1st December 2012, from http://parenting-on-purpose.blogspot.sg/2011_09_01_archive.html

Week 7 - TRANSFORMATION

This article on Harvard Business School (HBS)'s website features an interesting interview with HBS school professor, V. Kasturi Rangan also known as Kash Rangan. Part of the extremely interesting interview is shown below:

Image from salesmanagement.org

Interviewer: The terms "social enterprise" and "nonprofit" seem to be used interchangeably. Are they synonymous?

Kash Rangan: No. There's an important distinction. Very early in the program we decided that we wouldn't focus purely on nonprofits. We thought it should be about social enterprise, regardless of whether it's for-profit or nonprofit. We defined social enterprise as an entity that's primarily in the business of creating social value. As long as an organization creates significant social value, we don't care how it sustains itself—with internally generated surplus or with donor funds.
Americans give roughly $300 billion a year to nonprofits, yet we really don't know much about what charitable organizations actually accomplish. Why aren't nonprofits more accountable and transparent with all this money?
That's a very big issue in this sector because there is no common measure or framework to assess whether these organizations are accomplishing their mission. Even simple measures are not widely reported, like we got X donations, and we took care of 1,000 children at a cost of $80 a child, which is less than $120 a child spent by comparable organizations. Even that amount of reporting would be very useful, but it is not the norm.
By and large the reporting focuses on the costs of raising money. The lower the better, with the logic being that more money can then go to actual programs. So an organization might report, "We spend 6 percent on fundraising, whereas the industry average is 12 to 14 percent." That's typical, but beyond that, we don't know how the other 94 percent is used. How many people came into the program, and what benefits did they get? And then the even bigger question beyond cost efficiency and effectiveness is, what impact did the organization have? Granted it is very complex to get all the way to that level, but even signposts along the way could be very useful.

Interviewer: Which is harder: raising money, building a successful organization, or achieving real impact?

Kash Rangan: They are all interrelated, but raising money is not the hardest of the three. Getting money is hard, but it is not more difficult than the other two. That's why there are over 1.4 million nonprofits, each with some amount of funding.

Putting the money to good use, building a successful organization, showing that you have a demonstrable impact in achieving your mission, and then scaling the organization are the hardest to accomplish. When you show impact, more money will flow in. 

Interviewer: Given how few nonprofits can document impact, would you say these organizations suffer from a leadership deficit?

Kash Rangan: No, I wouldn't put it that way. Many nonprofit leaders are fantastic, more than is acknowledged. They work hard, and they are very passionate about what they do. So I wouldn't call it a leadership deficit. I think there's an imagination deficit.
Leaders typically ask, "Am I accomplishing my program?" But that is too narrow a view. Nonprofit leaders need to be more visionary. They need to stretch themselves more and worry about mission impact. I believe nonprofit leaders get too bogged down in operational issues, be it fundraising, or managing the board, or program execution. They need to be more strategic.

Interviewer: Where do you see social enterprise heading over the next decade?

Kash Rangan: I am an optimist, and I believe we will see refreshing changes in that time frame. The new cadre of donors, the new family foundations, the folks who are involved in venture philanthropy, the new generation of entrepreneurs, and business leaders engaged in corporate social responsibility initiatives all will start attacking social issues in a much more disciplined way. Nonprofits too are very adaptive organizations. I expect to see some common understanding in the sector of what performance means, and how social value creation is measured and reported. From there on it is only a matter of aligning the money with the causes they care about. Perhaps investment intermediaries will emerge to ease the introductions and connections. There may be some consolidation of nonprofits at the top, but the sector will be a lot more vibrant with many new players and actors helping to facilitate the transformation.

This entire interview with Professor Kash Rangan that discusses what in his view is social entrepreneurship as a sector leading to huge transformation of the world states so many relevant points that we have learnt in our three years in BZSE. Take for example where he mentions that nonprofit and social enterprising leaders have to be more visionary. It was just last week in Mr Mao's MANSE class that we were throwing out words that in our opinion described good leaders - one of which being visionary!

How the professor describes the difference between a non-profit organisation (NPO) and a social enterprise in the very first question the interviewer asked him is so relevant to the NPO essay that Mr Damien had gotten us to write. If only I had come across this article in my research, I would have loved to cite Professor Kash Rangan where he mentioned "We defined social enterprise as an entity that's primarily in the business of creating social value. As long as an organization creates significant social value, we don't care how it sustains itself—with internally generated surplus or with donor funds".

The part where Professor Kash Rangan spoke about money and the impact of an organisation, saying that "putting the money to good use, building a successful organization, showing that you have a demonstrable impact in achieving your mission, and then scaling the organization are the hardest to accomplish. When you show impact, more money will flow in" - this is such a precious piece of advice for anyone aiming to start up an NPO, or an SE, or any business entity for that matter.

Image from hbs.edu

"The sector will be a lot more vibrant with many new players and actors helping to facilitate the transformation." - Professor V. Kasturi Rangan

References

Thompson, R. (2008, September 15). The coming transformation of social enterprise. Harvard Business School. Retrieved on 23 November 2012, from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5986.html

Week 6 - THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

My title for this blog post is actually a Bob Dylan song, and while searching for the lyrics, I came across this article on how technology in the globalised economy of the 21st century affects the development of social enterprises (SEs) and nonprofit organisations (NPOs).

Dahna Goldstein is the founder of PhilanTech, a web-based system that creates online applications made to provide maximum efficiency and impact for non-profits and foundations, scrapping all the unncessary time and money wasted on administrative work that comes along when funding is provided for. This idea came about while Dahna was working under the well-known SE organisation, Ashoka, where she was given the task of measuring the impact of the various programmes being run by Ashoka in the US and in Canada, but there was no data available as everything had been done through paperwork. She felt that it was completely inefficient, and she had to do something about it. (Bayrasli, 2011).

Image from bcorporation.net

"The idea is for both to use donor dollars on projects rather than process." - Dahna Goldstein

Through such technology, it's allowed for more effective planning of resources for social enterprises, whereby data can be easily retrieved through this software and funding being given without a tiresome administrative process. My personal view on this is that it is very in line with the way society is nowadays; fast-paced, IT savvy and fully reliant on efficiency. We can clearly see how social enterprises are moving along with the change that is happening in the world, with more and more innovative companies spurring a social transformation within their enterprise. (Gotkin, 2012, para.2).

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'

- Bob Dylan

References

Bayrasli, E. (2011, August 22). Social enterprise spotlight: For non-profits & foundations, the times are a changin'. Forbes. Retrieved on 12 November 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/elmirabayrasli/2011/08/22/social-enterprise-spotlight-for-non-profits-foundations-the-times-are-a-changin/

Gotkin, Z. (2012, August 15). Top 5 social enterprise technologies for business. MashableTech. Retrieved on 12 November 2012, from http://mashable.com/2012/08/15/business-social-enterprise-technologies/

Week 5 - PRO BONO (ALTERNATIVE CHANGEMAKERS?)

I first came across the term "pro bono" from the article in the Yale-NUS College blog that discusses more about lawyers or law students who wish to use their knowledge for the greater good. "Pro bono" is actually derived from Latin - the phrase "pro bono publico"; meaning "for the public good". The benefits of pro bono work are not subjected to the disadvantaged communities alone, however it is for humanity as a whole as it incorporates professional knowledge, skillsets and values. (Lim, 2012, para.7). For lawyers or law students, this could come in the form of advocating for human rights, or defending the innocent.

Image from rayharris57.wordpress.com

By now, I am sure you are well aware of my dreams of being a social entrepreneur if I could. Whilst I am still in the midst of pursuing that dream of mine, as the time for uni applications begin approaching, I have been trying to figure out which path to pursue for uni education. I remembered enjoying and excelling in Mr Patrick Seong's 'Legal Framework For Social Enterprise' module, so I thought of maybe furthering my studies in law. Mr Damien had come across a social enterprise law firm and found it to be a rather apt organisation for me to intern at to gain a better understanding of how I could incorporate what I have learnt in BZSE, with knowledge in law. The organisation was called International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) and it was founded by Karen I Tse, who hoped to create a community of people that would help secure a successful legal representation for children, women and men held in detention, more so in developing countries. It had not crossed my mind before, but this could be just as meaningful a job as being a social entrepreneur.

Image from huffingtonpost.com

Here is Karen I Tse, she was a trained public defender that had travelled to Cambodia in 1994 to provide humanitarian aid work for both "the United Nations and the International Human Rights Law Group, as a judicial mentor and to build a community of legal defenders." (Koshy & Samy, 2012, para.5). While she was there, she came across a 12 year old boy who had been beaten up, denied any legal representation and imprisoned, just for attempting to steal a bicycle. She realised how many innocent people in countries like Cambodia were in need of help, help that she could provide for them and she returned back to the US in 1997 and founded International Bridges to Justice.

"In her dream, IBJ would create a community of people in the United States and Europe who would join forces with human rights defenders and legal aid lawyers in Asia “to ensure effective legal representation for every child, woman, and man in detention”. IBJ works to guarantee the right to competent legal representation, the right to be protected from torture and the right to a fair trial for everyone." (Koshy & Samy, 2012, para.19-20).

So there are many ways in which we can be changemakers, and besides social entrepreneurship, being a human rights lawyer is one significantly meaningful way to help the most vulnerable in this world. This serves as yet another possible career path for us to consider.

"We are at a unique time in history because there is so much we can do." - Karen I Tse

References

Koshy, S. & Samy, F. A. (2012, October 14). When every step goes a long way. In TheStarOnline. Retrieved on 5 November 2012, from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/10/14/focus/12149161&sec=focus

Lim, A. (2012, November 5). Are lawyers vampires?. In YaleNUSblog. Retrieved on 5 November 2012, from http://yalenusblog.com/2012/11/05/are-lawyers-vampires/