By Muhammad Yunus One good way to get started with creating social business enterprises would be to launch a design competition for social business enterprises. There can be local competition, regional competition and global competition. Prizes for the successful designs will come in the shape of financing for the enterprises, or as partnership for implementing the projects.
All submitted social business proposals can be published so that these can become the starting points for the designers in the next cycles, or ideas for someone who wants to start a social business enterprise.
Social Stock Market itself can be started by a SBE as social business enterprise. One business school, or several business schools can join hands to launch this as a project and start serious business transactions.
Let us not expect that a social business enterprise will come up, from its very birth, with all the answers to a social problem. Most likely, it will proceed in steps. Each step may lead to the next level of achievement. Grameen Bank is a good example in this regard. In creating Grameen bank I never had a blue-print to follow. I moved one step at a time, always thinking this step will be my last step. But it was not. That one step led me to another step, a step which looked so interesting that is was difficult to walk away from. I faced this situation at every turn.
I started my work by giving small amounts of money to a few poor people without any collateral.
Then I realized how good the people felt about it. I needed more money to expand the program.
To access bank money, I offered myself as a guarantor. To get support from another bank, I converted my project as the bank’s project. Later, I turned it into a central bank project. Over time I saw that the best strategy would be to create an independent bank to do the work that we do. So we did. We converted the project into a formal bank, borrowing money form the central bank to lend money to the borrowers. Since donors became interested in our work, and wanted to support us, we borrowerd and received grants from international donors. At one stage we decided to be self-reliant. This led us to focus on generating money interanlly by collecting deposits. Now Grameen Bank has more money in depostis than it lends out ot borrowers. It lends out half a billion dollars a year, in loans averaging under $200, to 4.5 million borrowers, without collateral, and maintains a 99 per cent repayment record.
We introduced may programs in the bank --- housing loans, student loans, pension funds, loans to purchase mobile phones to become the village telephone ladies, loans to beggars to become door-to-door salesmen. One came after another.
If we create the right environment, SBEs can take up significant market share and make the market an exciting place for fighting social battles in ever innovative and effective ways.
Let’s get serious about social business entrepreneurs. They can brighten up this gloomy world.
To learn more about this author, visit Grameen Foundation's Website.
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Grameen Foundation
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Grameen Foundation's mission is to empower
the world's poorest people to lift
themselves out of poverty with dignity
through access to financial services and
to information.
With tiny loans, financial services and
technology, we help the poor, mostly
women, start self-sustaining businesses to
escape poverty. Founded in 1997 by a group
of friends who were inspired by the work
of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, our global
network of microfinance partners reaches
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