Despite the fact that there’s so much literature on social (business) entrepreneurship, I humbly believe that it’s a field whose book is still being written.
While definitions abound already – ranging from Ashoka, Skoll, Wikipedia, Yunus, Oxford – I think it’s still early in the game to say what it really is, and what is really working.
It’s a field-in-progress.
Which brings me to Change, Inc’s reason-for-being.
The intersection of social development and business is a space I’ve decided to devote my life to. In fact, it’s concretized in two social business enterprises I’m very much a part of – Hapinoy, an SBE providing business development services to microentrepreneurs; and Rags2Riches, an SBE working with communities in upcycling rags into high-end fashion accessories.
While I’m not aspiring to be an academician in this field, I still want to contribute to the continuing conversation.
Thus, I’ve decided to make this online repository – notebook, if you will – of what I’m actively learning, as a practitioner. These are grounded insights I continue to gather from experience in the field.
This thinking of course, is also very much shaped by working with (and sometimes healthily debating with) my partners-in-purpose in social business entrerprise - fellow Board Members in Hapinoy and Rags2Riches — notably Reese Fernandez, Bam Aquino, Fr. Javy Alpasa, Rapa and Jim Lopa, Dr. Aris Alip, Manny de-Luna, TJ Agulto, Ate Cynthia, and many more. Where my thinking starts and when it becomes a communal thought often blurs, due to the richness of our collaboration in this united journey.
That being said, Change, Inc is most definitely a work-in-progress. While I’ve created an outline of topics I want to cover, I want it to be a very organic endeavor. I hope to add, edit, and in some cases possibly change some of my thinking, depending on how things emerge and evolve.
I also hope that by sharing our experiences, you too may learn from our own learnings.