PROFIT FOR a social cause—that will be the main topic of a class to be offered to management seniors.
For the first time, the Leadership and Strategy (LS) Department offered an LS 126 class on social entrepreneurship, which gives a “creative solution to a marginalized sector of society,” said Maria Teresa Galura, LS Department lecturer.
Students under the class will be trained to craft plans for social business enterprises, said LS Department Chair Darwin Yu, Ph.D.
“The usual business plans…have to do with food, clothes, bags, slippers, stuffed animals,” Yu said. “Why can’t they do a project that uses business methods to create enterprises and to benefit disadvantaged groups?”
“Social flavor”
LS 126 (Strategy Formulation) is a capstone course for management seniors taking the entrepreneurship track. Together with LS 127 (Strategy Implementation), these courses aim to equip students with skills on business planning, implementation, and management.
“The only difference with this new course, done in tandem with Theo 141, is to put that social flavor in it,” said Galura, who will teach the LS 126 class on social entrepreneurship. Students taking this class are also required to take the Theology 141 class under lecturer Harvey Keh.
Keh said his class will form the students and make them understand the importance of building social enterprises to help marginalized communities. On the other hand, the LS 126 class will focus on developing the students’ skills on developing and maintaining the social enterprise.
“In short, the Theology 141 class will focus on the Why, while the LS 126 class will focus on the How,” said Keh.
Keh and Galura have been coordinating for the class. Aside from conducting planning sessions for the syllabus, they also exchange books, videos, and other instructional materials.
Passion and heart
One of the goals of social entrepreneurship is to let the marginalized sector co-own the business. “Coming up with a business per se and just offering them employment is not social entrepreneurship,” Galura said. “They have to be part-owners.”
Aside from being partners with the marginalized, social entrepreneurs have to love what they’re doing since it doesn’t pay well at first.
For her class, Galura expects “more creative ways of solving the problem.”
Management majors, she said, are trained to be profit-oriented. In her class’ case, the goal will be profit and social obligation.
