#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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. 

#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.

#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.