Social Enterprise Development for Communities

           New batch of potential social entrepreneurs (45 women members) from DLSU-COSCA’s eight partner community-based and non-government organizations in Metro Manila participated in the Lasallian Social Enterprise for Economic Development (LSEED) program’s community workshop. The activity is part of DLSU’s effort to expand implementation of LSEED in its effort to contribute to raising the level of awareness among stakeholders as strategy to support the development of social entrepreneurship. 

           The LSEED community workshops facilitated on February 13, 20, and March 5, 2020 by Mr. N. Salonga, LSEED’s Development Specialist aimed to help build the social entrepreneurship capacities of women.  The learning sessions introduced the community members to the concepts of social entrepreneurship (including the country’s micro, small, and medium enterprise landscape), organizational development, conflict management, participatory planning, financial literacy, design thinking and pitching a social enterprise (SE) idea.   The activity enabled the community members to experience “idea generation” and the design thinking process in a participative way.

             Simulation activities on the types of conflicts and planning processes were conducted to measure the level of understanding of the participants.  The modules emphasized that social entrepreneurs need to be resourceful, have to possess practical knowledge on business and personal finance and have to recognize that conflicts encountered by the organization’s stakeholders is but ordinary.  What may seem “not normal” is when an organization shows hesitance, if not ignores the sources and/or “drivers” of conflict in an organization.  Other important lesson from the workshop is the need to establish clarity in an organization’s vision and mission in order to have a functional SE structure. While social enterprise puts emphasis on sustainability and long term impact, livelihood projects focus more on sustenance and in addressing an immediate need.

            Mr Salonga shared some of the following workshop participant's take aways:  a) Nanay Rosanna expressed her appreciation of the session on financial literacy noting that aspiring social entrepreneurs like her needs to learn how to manage a business with the right knowledge and skills, and  b) Nanay Emma also agreed  by stating that a business owner needs to take into consideration a lot of aspects especially during the planning process and one of which is identifying and assessing the needs of their communities and the people, a model that social entrepreneurship tries to advocate for.

             As the COVID-19 pandemic renders everybody’s movement limited (with most areas in the country under enhanced community quarantine) the situation placed most, if not all members of our partner communities in difficult economic situation, LSEED continue to support a number of initiatives to respond to needs of partner community members such as extending relief assistance.