ALTERNATIVE MEANS. JGSOM and AMA have been pushing for more awareness of social entrepreneurship as a new way of doing business with a socially relevant twist. The photo shows Gawad Kalinga’s Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan last September 23. Photo by Alexandra L. Huang.

THE JOHN Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM), in partnership with the Ateneo Management Association (AMA), launched its social entrepreneurship project entitled “Extend.”

Through the project, JGSOM and AMA hope to advocate social responsibility to the Ateneo community. The main goal of the project is to partner student entrepreneurs with outlying communities, such as Gawad Kalinga’s (GK) Enchanted Farm, to financially aid them through business.

AMA External Relations Vice President Lady Cheng, who is also the project head of “Extend,” said that the project would be social enterprises of the partner communities.

“Social enterprise means not just making a business or buying and selling. It means that you have a social aspect in it, or, in a sense, you want to help people through it,” she explained.

GK’s Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan, a project with a thrust for sustainable community development as a solution to poverty, will be the primary site of the project.

“GK is known for building houses, but from there, they wanted to make a more sustainable change and they wanted to help the community through sustainable livelihood,” said Cheng.

Shared efforts

“[The] business doesn’t just generate profit. It actually helps these communities by not shortcutting them with their salaries, and they want to pay the farmers correctly,” said Cheng.

She also added that the participants were tasked to add value to the resident farmers’ produce. “For example, a tomato. You would want to make it into ketchup, or you want to make it into spaghetti sauce. So basically, when you add value to it, you can charge higher prices, and you help these farmers.”

Cheng further explained that the main objective of Extend is to ultimately raise social entrepreneurship as a viable business strategy aimed towards social development.

The project’s approach is in line with what Development Studies Program Director Leland Dela Cruz discussed as angles in tackling social entrepreneurship.

“The first is the provision or enhancement of existing livelihoods of marginalized communities. The second is the provision of bottom-of-the-pyramid products so we’re able to sell commodities which the poor need, improving access to certain commodities they need,” said Dela Cruz.

Geared for social entrepreneurship

Extend provides opportunities for participating student entrepreneurs to get hands-on experience for business.

“It’s also like an incubator for the Extend Task Force managers to learn, to make mistakes, to decide and of course in turn, they would also start their own businesses in the future,” said Cheng.

“They will be the ones making the decisions and [are] going to be the ones handling all the manufacturing and marketing operations.”

JGSOM Dean Rudy Ang said that it was partly a cooperative effort with student organizations to promote social entrepreneurship to students.

“We’re working with student organizations so outside-the-classroom learning can also take place. I feel that they have to be exposed to social entrepreneurship in a variety of ways from a variety of directions for them to see the richness of the potentials here,” said Ang.

He also added that an effort between JGSOM and Sanggunian to form a “student organization that would focus on providing consultancy services to social entrepreneurs without adequate business skills” is in the works as of press time.

Moreover, the incorporation of social entrepreneurship to JGSOM’s curriculum also aims to tap students who might wish to practice business in this way.

“In the last five or six years, we have aggressively tried to focus not just on entrepreneurship, but also social entrepreneurship,” said Ang.

“Our effort is to let our students be aware that social entrepreneurship is a very real alternative for them in terms of careers. And we hope that enough of our students will see that and say, ‘This is for me. This is what I’d like to do.’”

Such awareness would already be imparted to management students as early as their second year, wherein they would be required to spend some time in GK’s Enchanted Farm.

Minor degrees in social entrepreneurship studies and social enterprise development will soon be offered by the Leadership and Strategy Department, in cooperation with the Developmental Studies Program, for non-management majors.

Long-term development

For Ang, addressing the economic problems faced by the Philippines would take more than simple outreach programs to poverty-stricken areas.

He also noted that budget has always been the main concern for non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Dela Cruz, however, said that the problems encountered by NGOs are rooted not only in budget difficulties, but also in the lack of knowledge in running actual operations. He added that because of this, NGOs are finding it hard to adapt to certain business practices required to make their systems run.

“Businesses might [also] have some problems dealing with the social development work because this is not exactly just another business—it has its own dynamics,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ang said, “The beauty of social entrepreneurship efforts is that it looks for ways of providing the services that the poorest of the poor need, but in a sustainable way, because we cannot just look at what service we’re going to provide. We also have to say how we’re going to support it.”

House Bill No. 6085, also known as the Magna Carta for Social Enterprises, is also being pushed for in Congress. Ang said that the bill would provide incentives and protection for social entrepreneurs.

He also noted that if Bam Aquino’s bid in the 2013 Senatorial Elections were to succeed, he would certainly be a catalyst for social entrepreneurship.

“He has been such an active advocate for social entrepreneurship, and he has such real concern for social development and the poorest of the poor,” said Ang. “If he ran and won as senator, this movement will gain a much more public face, and it will lead to faster progress in this area.”

With the spread of social entrepreneurship as a development strategy all over the world, Ang expressed his dismay that the Philippines is only adopting it now.

“Half of me says that it’s so obvious and yet, it took us so long to arrive at this conclusion…that social development requires the use of business and entrepreneurial skills,” said Ang.

“The new face of social development is social entrepreneurship. Instead of working for multinationals, instead of going out and competing for the very few jobs that are available, let’s create jobs and let’s make a difference in the lives of the people who are most in need of our help,” he concluded.