British Council in cooperation with Ateneo School of Government and Ashoka Philippines organised a two-day forum-workshop on social enterprises to raise the awareness of young people in creating socially responsible businesses.

Social Enterprises is defined by the UK government as ‘businesses with primarily social objectives whose profits are reinvested in the community’. Social Enterprises can help improve the community economy, create jobs, solve social problems, or even deliver public services. Especially in this time of financial crisis, social enterprises become a more important concept in today’s economy.

We invited Cliff Southcombe of Social Enterprise Europe Ltd, a pioneering expert in designing training programmes and operational structures for the sustainability of social enterprises, as main resource speaker. His extensive work in this area make him an ideal mentor for budding social entrepreneurs.

During his visit, Cliff met with leading social entrepreneurs to look at the best practice of the successful social enterprises in the Philippines and to explore how they operate to fill unmet social needs and tackle some of society's most entrenched social and environmental challenges. He also looked at what kind of support is needed for their development.

Fr. Javy Alpasa, SJ shared the experience of Rags2Riches from its humble beginnings of organising the women rag weavers of Payatas into carving their own niche market in the fashion industry and winning global competitions.

Other successful social enterprises like Hapinoy through JP Melgazo gave broader insight into the different mechanisms by which social enterprises can positively affect lives of people especially in underprivileged communities.

Youth-led social enterprises such as Handog na Oras Para sa Edukasyon (HOPE), Ecologic and Dire Husi, one of the winners of I am A Changemaker, also gave their own inputs on how young people can already start helping solve social problems in their community.

A mini-workshop on developing project proposals was conducted and the participants were asked to conceptualise their own social enterprise and present this to a panel composed of representatives from the British Council and Ashoka-Philippines.

The 3 best social enterprise project proposals were given a seed capital of Php 20,000 each to start up their projects. 5 consolation prizes of Php 10,000 were also given to deserving proposals