Social Enterprise Development for Communities

       DLSU’s  Center for Social Concern and Action  continue the  series  of   workshop both  for  community members  and  key  student  “Champions “  on  social entrepreneurship  as  avenue to support  social enterprises in partner urban poor communities and in building capacities of promising urban poor women and out-of-school youth on social entrepreneurship (SE) and enabling communities to develop SEs.

       Discussions with  community members were facilitated by COSCA’s Development Specialist for LSEED last  October 13 and 28, 2016 primarilly to provide the participants a briefer of the   micro small and medium  enterprises  (MSMEs) in the Philippines. During  the  workshop, community  members  were  grouped  into  clusters  ( Achievement Cluster to discuss topics  on Opportunity Seeking, Persistence, Commitment to Work, Risk Taking, Demand for Quality and Efficiency,  the Planning Cluster to tackle  Goal Setting, Information Seeking, Systematic Planning and Monitoring, and  the Power Cluster to discuss Persuasion and Self-Confidence) to  better appreciate  the Personal Entrepreneurial Characteristics of  Social Entrepreneurs (SEs).

       Following were the highlights of  the workshop:  One team understood the instructions clearly, and was able to come up with the right strategies.  The aggressiveness of  the team enabled them to produce the most number of products and earn the highest number of sales. The team highlighted the importance of  maximizing  bank accessibility to secure their money as well as the value of producing quality products / services.   Another team  displayed inability to take the risk of buying raw materials to produce products, which  resulted to the very low production output and sales outcome.  The  third  group  showed one important  strength,   the quality of the product they  produced enabled them to sell at a very competitive price. The team however acknowledged that the team  was not able to get the instructions correctly  hence, they spent their ‘money’ on unnecessary things during the  start of the simulation activity.  One group failed to come up with the  strategies correctly, experienced difficulty  during their planning activity and  was unable to take and manage the risks as entrepreneurs.

       The workshop  conducted  on October 28, 2016  introduced  the  women community members (a number  of LSEED student fellows attended as participant-observers)  basically to  two concepts:  1) Social Entrepreneurship  in the  Philippines  and  Characteristics  of  SEs, and 2)  Responding  to  Relevant  Community Problem/s and  creating the  SE idea,  establishing  partners  and  developing  the   SE idea. 

        The  learning sessions which  include  the series of workshop  conducted  on October 13 and 28 inspired  a  number  of  student fellows to  share  the  advocacy of  advancing SE.