Wednesday, December 4, 2013

#27 Final Editing on Project Timeline

After the consultation of Mr Michael, I need to edit a little bit on the title of activities which make them more standing out from the other texts. I will changed the colour of title event followed the colour of tips points for each activity. I also need to make title texts bold to show they are title of activities. Others than that, my timeline design for the project is already good enough. From this consultation, I realised that it is important to make the heading stand out more than the texts because heading will attract the users to read the following texts. Besides, the good heading also can easy go to mind of the users which will make them remember it more well.

So the project timeline looks like below:


Thursday, November 28, 2013

#26 Design Project Timeline 2

I designed the project timeline to make it looks more interesting and professional. Actually at earlier I designed the tip points in different colour differentiate by the tasks. For example, all promoting task are in red colour, while all event tasks are in yellow colour. Yet I found that it is not really suitable to put it like that. So I differentiate the colours by follow the activity of project. For instance, for Mother's Day event, I make the tip points all in purple colour. So that the readers can east find and categorised what they need to do. After designed the tip points and arrows with the texts, I felt that was not enough for making the title more seems like title? So I added the dots lines below the title of events. The project timeline looked better after this.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

#25 Design Project Timeline 1

I created and designed the project timeline for this DIY Reuse Project by using Adobe Photoshop. I typed out all the wordings first on the A3 size paper. It was very packed when I did all the text parts with font size 12. So I decided to cut out some not so important contents. It still felt very packed with those texts. So I keep reducing the font size of the texts until it become font size 9. Then the visual was just become better.

The first draft created without editing on texts.

The draft after texts edited.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

#24 Analysis Results of Market Survey

After collected the feedback from the market survey, I did analysis on it as below:

To study the opinions of consumers, we have did a market survey on 25 respondents. The purpose of survey is to know what the consumers think about the products made from reusable materials. Most of them, around 16 consumers, willing to buy the products made from the reusable materials. It is because they think the products are eco-friendly, usable and unique/creative. Whereas the others who not interested to buy feel the products are not useful for them and not interesting enough. Most of the consumers think that the products are worth between RM5 - RM20. They were willing to pay more for the bag that was shown in picture. Some of the respondents think that the price of the products should be cheap since they are made from reusable items, yet some others have opposite opinions which they believed that those products should be more expensive since they are made from reusable things. Besides, around 21 respondents stated that they will definitely recommended these products to their friends and relatives since it is interesting and environment friendly. We also asked them if they want to learn to make such items which were made from reusable materials. Most of them say yes, since it can save money and it is interesting to learn. But a few respondents feel that they should just buy the products which is much more easier than making it themselves. Moreover, many respondents are willing to help in collecting the unwanted items for us to reuse it.

From the analysis, we realise that ‘environment friendly items’ can be the unique selling point of our products since most of the consumers highlighted it. Yet to make them have the desire to buy, we need to make the products unique, creative and usable. Furthermore, we also need to make sure that the products would not be damaged easily, since one of the respondents expressed his/her worries on this point. We also need not worry about the lack of wasted-reusable-materials since many respondents are willing to help us collect these items.

From the analysis, I knew that actually many youths love the environment. They attracted by the idea of reusing wasted material and made as new product. Most of them give very positive feedback for the market survey.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

#23 Progress of Market Survey

The market survey questions have been printed out and we need to get the feedbacks from the youth. So, another group member and I decided to go library and find students who willing to give feedback to us. We chose library as our choice because the people would not run away from the chairs in library. We know it is not so proper, but actually many students in Taylor's did that before to collect the responds.

So another group member and I separated the surveys half amount and go to different ways to spread it out. I checked on the faces and actions of the students first then I just went closer to them. It is because I may disturbed some students who really want to concentrate on study or assignments. I only spotted those students who looks not busy or talking. Then I went to them and ask whether they free to lend me one minute to fill in the survey for me. Luckily, they are all willing to help. It was interesting when I asked a table of 3 students whether they free or not, two girls were rejected to fill in that survey because they wanted to focus on their assignment. When I just want to leave the table, the third girl said just give her the paper, she willing to fill in. I was happy and just give her the paper. When I moved to other table, I heard that the third girl said to the other two girls, "We should be helpful to fill in this, because later if we need to collect feedbacks, we also need help from the others.". I did not know why, but is quite warming, not like using each other, but just think of each other, that helpful feeling.

After 20 minutes, we finish the section that hunting people to fill in the survey.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

#22 Develop Market Survey

To know what the youths think about products DIY by reusable materials. I have made a market survey questions with my another group member. We inserted the images of the DIY products and introduced them on the paper. So that the respondents will know what is that and understand what is happening which make them easy to answer the survey. The images I putted is a DIY handbag which targeted to female respondents and two DIY lamps which made from drink bottle and Starbucks paper cup with broken glass. In the market survey, we asked would the respondents buy it, how much the products worth, would they recommend to people around them, do they want to learn how to make that kind of DIY things and are they willing to help us or donate the unwanted items for us. Yet the way we expressed in the questions are quite messy, so we ask consultation from Mr Micheal, the lecturer, to help us on checking and editing those questions. We were really appreciated the great concerns of our lecturer on this project.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

#21 Analysis & Summarise Data Second Research

We scared the interview sources is not enough to support our solution, so with the help of lecturer, we have an article about recycling cantons. We will tried explored the reasons and the facts about recycle or reuse in it. I did the study and analysis on it. Yet after analysis and summarise on the article, I realised that actually the article is not really related to our project purposed. It is more to how they recycled the cantons. It was quite wasting time which the article is quite long, yet I gain some knowledge on what can be recycle from those cantons and how the process is. From this experiences, I learned that I need to have better understanding for the the contents first then just go into more deep to analysis.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

#20 Research - Finding Interviewers 2

Today in class, our lecturer helped us on the interview part which we really cannot find any person for interviewing. We will call them for requesting interview in the class. After found the social entrepreneur corporate website, we and lecturer did the draft to say in phone about the interview request. We did call some of the corporate, but one is nobody pick up and another one is answer very short which seems did not want to keep continue on the conversation. It may because the time is time off work which is around five in evening. So that was why the attitude of the person in the other side of phone is not good at all. Luckily, we found one kind person in EcoKnights who are willing to answer our phone call with good attitudes. She gave her email to us to do email interview.

We gave her few questions in the first email and get well-replied from her. Then we sent back our second email to understand more about the answers she gave. Yet she did not replied anymore.

From the interview experiences I got, I felt that was really bad. I thought the person who doing social entrepreneurship should be kind since they doing something benefits for community. Yet all of them are not so friendly to let the outsiders know more about them and their tasks.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

#19 Research - Finding Interviewers 1

We need interview to research on this reuse project whether it works or not. The interview also may give us information on how we collect those wasted items and the responds of audiences about reuse.
So, I started to find the related organisations to request to have interview with them. The both organisations I founded are Persatuan Kitar Semula and Community Recycle for Charity (CRC). Persatuan Kitar Semula is an organisation department which concerned of recycling in Malaysia, while CRC is an organisation which doing charities to those need help with recycling. I have tried to email them, but did not get any replies.

Our lecturer also told me that one of our mates also try to find the CRC for interview, but they reject it. So he asked me to do a casual conversation with them, see whether they willing to interview or not.

So I called the CRC's hotline and talking with the "operator" in a casual way. When I ask whether I can know more about them and their tasks, then the person just passed me an email. Then I emailed the related person with consultation of Mr Michael on "the way I speak" in email about reques for interview. Yet there are no reply at all from them.

I was hard to find kind person to interview. Maybe they are busy for good did or they just do not want to do this kind of free but trouble interview?

Thursday, October 24, 2013

#18 Contest Planning

Our group have discussed about the contest elements before. Yet we have not yet decided which to do. So I have presented the contests as below:

1) National Day theme Contest - The participants can collect those reusable materials from us and design products from those items. The DIY items must be related to Malaysia's National Day. The best DIY product will get big prizes from us.

2) Christmas Day theme Contest - The participants can collect those reusable materials from us and design products from those items. The DIY items must be related to Christmas celebration. The best DIY product will get big prizes from us.

The contests above are to attract people to start DIY with their own hands. Those contests are all free to join. Yet beside getting experiences, the participants will also stand a chance to win the big prizes to encourage them to do DIY from reusable materials.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

#17 Event Planning

We have discussed about events in this project before. But we did not have a confirm list yet. So I did thought of that:

1) Mother's Day DIY event - The event can be joined by children, parents and families. It is to celebrate the Mother's Day by DIY from reusable materials. The participant groups will DIY on the spot. The winner will get prizes. All the participant groups may have a small gifts too.

2) Halloween event - The participants can design their own Halloween costume at their home with reusable materials first. Then at the Halloween day, they can wear it to the party and celebrate the event. The most creative costume will get the prizes.

3) Earth Day DIY event - The participants can join by individual or group. They need to DIY with something they have already collected. The most creative product's participant will get prizes.

3) Showcase and DIY on the spot - We can hold showcase to show some DIY products made from reusable materials in the mall. Besides, we will served a corner which let people join in to do simple DIY followed the guides given.

The activities above are to attract people come to join DIY and have fun together. Besides, those activities also make to reuse the wasted items well.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

#16 Ways to Promote

I have got some ways and ideas to promote this project. We can use the social network to promote our website, events and contests which is agreed by every member. When people feel something is good or interesting, they will definitely share them on their Facebook or Twitter page. Yet, we need to find a source to create the content to share first. We will created our own Facebook and Twitter page to be the main platform to share those information and our website. Besides, we also need to collaborate with other popular pages to spread out our website. When the audiences saw it and feel nice, they will share to others too. This process will keep going forward and forward more.

Besides, we can also promote our events and contests in radio station. It is because nowadays the radio station already have one section which announce the events details on air. It is free to everyone who want to promote their events. The announcement played many times in a day. We can submit our event and contest details to the radio station and let the DJs to help us promote it.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

#15 Wireframe & Flow Chart of Website

We have discussed the wireframe and flow chart of the Reuse DIY website together. The website will contains About page which introduce who are us, DIY tips and guides sharing and a community to let everyone discuss and share about it. We did a very well group work on this kind of thinking process. Although it may have some conflicts in between which when our ideas are not same, but was happy that with group work, there will be more efficient thinking come out from it. The flow chart below shows the flow of the website we will developed.


Thursday, October 10, 2013

#14 Website

For the website, I have thought something as below:

We developed a website for this reuse project. We introduced ourselves and our missions in the “About Us” page. The site contained step-by-step-guide for DIY with reusable items which categorised in different grouping such as home appliance, fashion, decoration and others type. The audiences can DIY for their own by following the guides published in the site. Besides, they can share their ideas on DIY with reusable things in the online community too. If they have something want to reuse but not sure how to reuse it, they can always posted their questions or problems online. The people and admin of the site will try to help, discuss and solve it. Furthermore, there is a section which the audiences can sell their DIY products designed from reusable items. To make this project more attracted, we will posted the event we planned, which related to DIY with reusable materials, on the site. The events can join by anybody who are interested to and it is free. We also organised DIY contests which the participants need to design products related to the theme and develop from reusable materials. The winners will get prize for their creative works.

From the description above, I realised that website is an important platform to let people know what we are doing, what we provided and what we organised. It gave all the information the audiences needed 24/7. So the audiences can just find they want to know in the website. Besides, for me, the website actually give confidence to the audiences about the project or organisation. It is because when someone found there is a website for the corporate or organisation, they will get more believed into them.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

#13 Reuse Project Planning

For the project planning, we will start to build the DIY from reusable materials website first. So that we can promote our mission well with that platform to show people who are we and what we do. After that, we may hold some events to let people come and join the party with us. It is fun if many people DIY in the same time, same place together. The events will promote us what what we actually do and let people know more about us. Then we will hold a showcase in mall. The showcase will showed the DIY products that made from participants of the event. They can view their own products displayed in public. The showcase is to let more people know about the benefits of DIY from reusable materials and what they can gain from the DIY. In the showcase, we will also promoted our upcoming contest in it to hope more people will join. So, we also do hold contest to let more talented people to join in to DIY "trend" which the big prizes may become an attraction to the people. From the contest, we hope that they will found the happiness and satisfaction by doing this DIY from reusable items.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

#12 Reuse Ideas Developing

Our group has discuss many ideas on how to work on this reuse project. They thought a lots of ways to DIY reuse. Yet actually my original idea was just focus on one item to reuse. But it was also good that for now, because everybody can have freedom to choose what to use and what to DIY.

We thought of developing a website which contains these DIY ideas and also organised some events and contests which looks interesting. For example, the event can be National Day. We all celebrated this day with DIY-made-decoration. Other member got suggested Mid-Autumn Festival celebration, but I spoke out my opinion which we normally celebrated this festival with our families followed our Chinese tradition. After hearing my opinions, the member also agreed with this fact. So when thinking about the project timeline, we need to pay attention to those big days or holidays in Malaysia to avoid clashing the event or contest days with it.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

#11 Reuse Things to DIY

The people now are increasing amount of trashes every year. The environment has been polluted is getting poorer. To reduce the trashes, we can join in to the green activity like reuse. Since we cannot recycle the trashes on our own, and the recycle activity already well-known by Malaysia, so this time we will focus our scope to reuse the wasted materials and DY from it.

From my opinion, we used to created trash in our daily lives. From that trash, can we choose something out and reuse it? The answer is yes. For example, after we read the magazine, we may throw it away, since the recycle lorry out there are more to collect newspaper for recycling instead of magazines. From the magazines, we can do something interesting by our own. The images below will explained it:

We can make Christmas paper tree from the old magazines as decoration to decorate the house or working place.

There are so many crafts we can make from old magazines, such as photo frame, decorations and so on.

We can make gift bows from the old magazine. Actually I did used old magazine paper to wrap the gift also.

The gift bags or paper bags can be made from old magazines too.

The magazine-bowl which we can use to put our keys, coins or other little things. It may need quite a lot efforts or time, but is worth that it come out as an art-bowl.


The magazine-style wallet developed from old magazines. I was impressed by it when I found it on Internet, yet it may need some steps to make the wallet strong enough.


For me who is consider as lazy person, when I looks at the wallet idea, I get impressed by it and felt want to make it once when I free too. So, actually, the DIY products or ideas which are interesting will attracted people to participate in but now only just viewing.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

#10 Change RSA Topic

We told our reuse idea to the lecturer. He said our topic is more to the first question of the RSA awards which is "Active Citizens". So we change our topic from "Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship" to "Active Citizens" since we are more confident is topic.

This "Active Citizens" is to develop and create a means of empowering young people with civic capacity and leadership skills so they can help transform and improve their communities. The overall aim is to encourage youths to educate, challenge and inspire one another so that they may actively engage in social change with a focus on scaling up the effects and impact of these activities within their communities and the nation. Civic capacity is closely related to active citizenship and leadership. Youths have a large role to play in creating social change, innovation, and impact within their community and to a larger context, the nation.

Our solution or ideas should be built on strong human-centred research about the motivators for youth civic engagement rather than assumptions, and across a range of users rather than just your near-peer group. The thinking and consideration should be focus on understanding the real needs from interactions and discussions with people and connecting to our own solution. We also need to know who is civic engagement for and how can it fulfil the needs of community. We should planned a effective and usable proposal our to support the problems stated. We need to create the visual description of the service or campaign that communicates what it does, for whom and why. We should know how the solution promote youth and civic engagement/youth leadership. We need to plan who provides it, its experiences that can given to people and its value to the society. Last, the thing we need to consider is what is the relationship between youth engagement, civic engagement and leadership in the community and nation.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

#9 New Idea - Reuse Things

So we start thinking other ideas which is more effective and useful to social entrepreneurship.

I have inspired by the idea of reusing receipt which wrote down some phrases or idioms on the back of receipt that told by lecturer. We get the receipts easily in our lives when buying things. But we just throw it into dustbin since it seems useless for us. Yet the receipt-reusing-idea can help to save paper and make it not as trash. So, I start thinking what things we can get easily around us, but we just treated it as wasted items or rubbish. I will try to reuse and DIY it to a new product.

I did some researches online about DIY from reusable things. Surprisingly, the Google showed many DIY ideas and guides on it. Suddenly, I realised that there are so much things we can do to reuse those wasted items, but we just do not search and think it spontaneously. I should do something to promote this DIY from reusable items.

There many products we can DIY from wasted items. For me, I got experiences to DIY a pair of old long pants to become short trousers. It is very simple and easy to do, yet can save from just throwing the old pants. The images below showed some of the DIY products from reusable items:

This photo frame made from magazine.

The old tee-shirt become a pretty skirt.

Jeans pants become jeans bag.

The old bulbs as flower decorations.

Hand bracelets made from ring pulls of cans.

The images above are just a few examples of DIY products from reusable items.There are still many kinds of DIY ways that interesting enough.


Thursday, September 19, 2013

#8 Social Entrepreneurs Role Playing

Our group have an idea which doing social entrepreneurs role playing video and uploaded on Youtube or Vimeo. The video is about a person come and play a role in social entrepreneurship in one day. The person will do what normally that "role" doing. For example, if a social entrepreneur normally doing road show to promote their organisation, then the person also need to do the same.We will record down the whole process and then upload it online. It may be an around 15 minutes video which showing the tasks the person have did and last his feeling and thoughts of this experiences. We may promoted the video on Facebook or Twitter which is in free cost but just lending the online social power. From that kind of experience, the role-playing-person will know what actually is social entrepreneurship. The viewers of the video will also can know more about social entrepreneurs from the video. If they interested to be the person inside video, they can just register to join.

After consulted with lecturer, this solution actually also has same problem with social entrepreneurship campaign which is lack of some unique points that make people join in.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

#7 Social Entrepreneur Campaign 2

We tried to explored more on the solution we stated last time. We can hold competition or activity in secondary and college or university which crowded by the youths. I have suggested to hold a quiz-like event to let the student study social entrepreneurship, so that they can did will in this competition. But this idea is very educational which will not so attracted to the audiences.

We also discussed about research part on this campaign. I have made a very draft questionnaire's questions to know what students think about social entrepreneurship. The draft questions are showing at below:

1) Gender: Male / Female

2) Age: Less than 18 / 19-21 / 22 and above

3) Programme studying: Lower secondary school / Upper secondary school/ Foundation / Diploma / Degree / Others

4) Have you ever heard about "social entrepreneur"? Yes / No / Maybe

[Definition of Social Entrepreneurship]

5) [If your answer is No and Maybe in previous question, please answer this question] After you read the definition of "social entrepreneur", do you think that you really do not know about social entrepreneur? Or you just do not know "this kind of definition" is consider as "social entrepreneur"?
I really do not know about social entrepreneur. / I actually know it, but just do not know it called social entrepreneur.

6) Do you interested to know about "social entrepreneur"? Yes / No

The questions above were drafts only. Yet I did not have chance to use, since the other group member came out another idea on solution ways.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

#6 Social Entrepreneurship Campaign

So, the group members and I decided to make the project as social entrepreneurship campaign in school. We thought a lots of events for that campaign like tshirt design contest to attract people to join with the prize, the photo gallery exhibition to get attention from people by the social entrepreneur related pictures, hand printing on the cloth to gather people interest and so on. The tshirt design contest needed the participants to design tshirt follow the concept or terms of social entrepreneurship. We attracted them with the prizes given to the winners. The participants will need to know and understand what is social entrepreneur first then just can design the tshirt. So, indirectly, the contest make them know what is social entrepreneur. The photo exhibition is like showcase displaying pictures captured by photographer around Malaysia related to social entrepreneurship. The photographers can use this chance to showcase their photos to the youths or students. The photo will attached with captions and displayed to the audiences. Besides, we will also did a hand printing event for this campaign which inspired by WWF's campaign. The students will use colours and print their hands on a piece of huge cloth that contains many hand prints. It showed that many people supported and joined this campaign.

Yet from those ideas, I cannot really find a good one. What did really attract the people to join tshirt design contest? And it is so hard to design a shirt that related to social entrepreneurship. I just can think of making some typography design related to the theme on the tshirt. For the photo gallery, we need to collected sources from the photographers about social entrepreneur photos. But it have same problem as the tshirt design contest, what kind of photo can express what social entrepreneurship is? From my opinion, the worst one is the hand printing event. I got no idea why to hand print. It go no purpose and message that brings out from the hand printing action.

When consulted with lecturer, he, Mr Michael, questioned us what let the audiences to attract and join the campaign. We cannot really answered it. He also shown us some advertise campaign in class as reference. Yet the concept is not so suitable for our topic, since we are more to shortage of funds and the brands in references are already famous and well-known by people.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

#5 How to Encourage Social Entrepreneurship?

In this module and assignment, I have partner with the other 3 group members to work with. We focus on how to educate people what social entrepreneurship is. We discussed and brainstormed how should we design a way that let people understand more about social entrepreneur. Yet not typical way like just printing flyers or posters. It is because people are easy to ignore those paper type information. For example, they may just throw the flyers into the dustbin without viewing it. So, we came out an idea to develop a campaign inside the college and university. It should be attract those youths or students to have a look on it. The campaign can bring more interactivity with the students and let them understand about social entrepreneurship. But for me, it is very hard to introduce this term to students because they may rush to class or feel no interest to listen on "education" since I always just pass by those "promotion event" in university.

We did brainstormed many solutions ways such as infographic poster at LRT or KTM station, intoduction video, gallery exhibition in mall, tshirt design and so on. While I came out the other ideas like 30 seconds commercial or interview in radio station to let people understand more about social entrepreneurship. I chose radio station as promotion media because when people listening to radio, they mostly stay in car or sit on anywhere doing something which will more concentrate than watching television that the audiences may change to other channel with remote control. I also suggested doing interview or publish advertisement on newspaper or magazine. Yet this 2 ways need not a small costs to complete, especially for the commercial on radio. 

Thursday, September 5, 2013

#4 Malaysian Social Entrepreneurship


I have an infographic about social entrepreneurship in Malaysia from my lecturer, Mr Michael. It was designed by Malaysia Social Enterprise Alliance (SEA Malaysia).The graph showed that the average team size of social entrepreneur is normally developed by 6 people. The gender of founders is normally 1 out of 3 are male. It means there are more female involved in social entrepreneurship in Malaysia. The fact really surprised me which I thought there maybe more male interested in this kind of entrepreneur. Obviously, I was wrong. The areas of impact by Malaysian social entrepreneurship are culture (40%), disabled (20%), youth (20%), delinquent (10%) and human rights (10%). On the other hand, there are various types of industries which social entrepreneurs joined in such as culture/fashion (30%), entertainment (20%), events for youth (20%), food & art (10%), auto (10%) and consulting-research (10%). From the graph shown in picture, there are 50% social entrepreneurs that supported by government, yet the other 50% are not. Approximately 45% of the social entrepreneur companies have either disbanded or changed directions in terms of target communities or products/services.

Besides, there are some startup barriers reasons for social entrepreneurs in Malaysia. The first reason stated is fundings shortage. The fact stated that 90% social entrepreneurs in Malaysia used their own money as startup capital, while another 10% was funded by donations/grants. Yet this is not the biggest problem faced in Malaysia according to the people in SEA Malaysia. The second reason is unable to recruit or retain quality talent. This may be a factor because most of the talented youths will be more interested to higher income and potential job. The third and fourth reasons are lacking of physical infrastructure for community and difficulty sourcing affordable quality materials which I actually not really understand this point. Maybe some of the social entrepreneurs industries need some affordable facilities and sources to develop their corporate. Next, the lack of motivation from addressable communities is also one of the barriers in social entrepreneurs in Malaysia. There are no campaign or media that really works popular to tell people what to do with social entrepreneurship. Another reason is the weak business model understanding and planning. The startup team maybe mistaken the social problems or gave out solution which did not work effectively to the society. The last factor is public's misperception of social entrepreneurship. It is because mostly the people do not know what social entrepreneurship is. The term is too strange for people, it seems like one kind of free business or whatever. Some social entrepreneurs even do not know they actually are social entrepreneurs, but just thought they are normal businesses.

From the infographic, I know more about the situation of social entrepreneurs in Malaysia. The biggest problem we faced is the public do not know much on social entrepreneurship, or some even do not hear it before. When the people have better understanding on it, then most of the barriers can be overcome.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

#3 Social Entrepreneurship

In general, social entrepreneurship is about applying practical, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society. It defined the problems of society and overcome it with their services or products which will make a social improvement.

So why do a person will choose to be a social entrepreneur? From my view, it is a quite hard entrepreneurship type since the person need to analyse the social problem and provide solution on it. Is has to be something that benefit to the social, not just earning money only. Someone may choose to be a social entrepreneur because they already earn too much in their originally business. And now they have extra funding to develop a social entrepreneurship which to give back something to the society. This did will help them build up the name of kindness and good deed which will bring reputation to their corporate. Another type person who want to involve in social entrepreneur maybe the one who really want to serve and do something good to the society. They are ambitious to improve the community with their own efforts.

So, I have found some successful social entrepreneurs in 2013:
Mois Cherem Arana, Enova, Mexico 
In Mexico, 69% of the population does not have access to computers or the internet, severely limiting opportunities in education. Enova’s solution to this challenge is the Red de Innovación y Aprendizaje (RIA), or the Learning and Innovation Network. RIA represents a chain of 70 educational centers that provide underserved Mexican communities with quality educational opportunities and access to information technologies. A successful collaboration among social, public, and private sectors, RIA has served more than 350,000 people in low-income communities since 2007, with 3000 new members signing up weekly.
Reese Fernandez-Ruiz, Rags2Riches, Philippines 
At the Payatas landfill in the Philippines, enterprising women scrounge for scraps of cloth for weaving rugs. Recognizing the women’s work ethic, but also the challenges they faced in earning a living wage, Rags2Riches was founded to connect these women directly with garment factories and markets. Rags2Riches has expanded its activities beyond Payatas to provide a fully integrated and sustainable livelihood platform to communities that seek to increase incomes, gain access to social services, and build a roadmap for their families to get out of poverty. In addition, Rags2Riches has partnered with top Filipino fashion designers to build a high-end brand with great social impact. 

From the examples/evidences above, I realise that social entrepreneurship do provide a better living to us which is in win-win situation that the corporate will earn money and the social will get improved.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

#2 Briefing on "Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship"

Mr Michael briefed and explained about one of the topic in RSA Genovasi Malaysia Awards programme. The topic is "Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship", the second topic of the awards. Mr Michael told me and my classmates,he will focused on this topic only since this is the most interesting topic in the sheet. Yet we are free to choose any topic we want to do.

The "Encouraging Social Entrepreneurship" is to cultivate a network of social entrepreneurs and a system to reward and support local businesses that benefit society in Malaysia and globally. The overall aim is to provide a practical demonstration of how social entrepreneurs can be successfully cultivated and outfitted with business knowledge and a strong social purpose. From the brief, "Social entrepreneurs are guided by a strong mission to create and sustain social value. Social entrepreneurs today are using their creativity and enthusiasm to address social problems which affect the way in which we live.".  My awareness about social entrepreneur is a business or corporate which run based on giving solution to the society problems.

To encourage social entrepreneurship, I need to promote this term among individuals and businesses to make them more understand about it. It will directly or indirectly encourage more social entrepreneurs in the community. The idea concept should serve the public's interest and have a strong social benefit. For example, I create an awareness campaign to help people understand more about social entrepreneur and encourage them to think beyond wealth creation and take part on larger social responsibility for the community; or I design a learning toolkit for businesses to understand what and how social entrepreneurship can help them and to the community. The solution can also be a new or redesigned public service that can let people easy to join and become social entrepreneurs.

So, for this assignment title, first I need to understand what social entrepreneurship really is and how its position and growing now in Malaysia. Then I analysis and study the problems that social entrepreneurship faced. From the problems, I may choose one, few or all to overcome it with a new ideal solution that I designed.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

#1 Briefing on Module

Today is the first day class of Personal Project 1: New Boundaries. Mr Michael Choong is my lecturer for this module. He briefed me and other classmates the module outline which included the major project on RSA Student Design Awards and the second assignment on individual reflective blog. The RSA project is to produce a well-researched and informed design project proposal and proof-of-concept that meets the RSA Student Design Awards. There will be 3 topics provided which I need to choose one of them as my RSA project. The joining can be in individual or group form. I also need to write individual reflective journal about the process of work. The journal should record my experiences, analysis my works and evaluate my progress too. The whole module and project is to let me practice in design thinking and create a solution or ideas concept for the social problem stated. I need to explore and enhance my area of design specialisation to meet the challenge of RSA Student Design Awards brief. It will benefits me in real design field in future since I understand how to think creative and effective from these assignments.