Learning and making a difference

18-year-old Justine Lee wants to help get each and every poor child in China a pair of much needed shoes. He wants to make a difference for the less fortunate but is also interested in the business side of things.

And last year, Justine got his wish for the best of both worlds when he took the route of enlightenment and chose to study at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Diploma in Business & Social Enterprise (BZSE). He is the team leader of Selfless Shoes which won second place in the Mayor’s Imagine Social Entrepreneurship (MISE) competition last year.

“Nowhere else allows me to help others while studying business,” said Justine, who was about to join the business school when the promotional flyer of BZSE came in his mailbox. He is among the 44 students who enrolled in BZSE last year.

The BZSE diploma aims to prepare students to manage projects in non-profit organisations, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes or even start up their own social enterprises. It is recognised by international organisations such as Schwab Foundation and World Vision.

In Singapore, Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Humanities (HMS) is the only school offering a formal education in social entrepreneurship but in the world, schools such as Stanford, Harvard and Columbia have already offered degrees and even postgraduate studies more than five years ago.

So when there was great interest on social entrepreneurship with MCYS forming the Social Enterprise Committee in 2006, now director of HMS Mrs Choo Cheh Hoon took the opportunity to push for the diploma.

She gathered members of her team from people who have experience in the community and social sectors or from the business sector but who have an interest in social entrepreneurship. For one, Mrs Joyce Tang was roped in from the Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Business school where she was originally from as she has a personal interest in social enterprises and entrepreneurship. Together with the team she gathered, Mrs Choo spent a year planning for the diploma.

But how does one teach the essence of social entrepreneurship? How does one teach the innovativeness that comes with entrepreneurship? It has always been a point of contention as to whether innovation can be taught. And yet another uphill task arises: how can one teach a student to have the heart for the less fortunate?

One of the unique features of the Diploma in Business & Social Enterprise is its experiential learning approach, where students get to go for as many practical experiences as possible. This includes putting them through both local and overseas exposure to the less fortunate and even interviews with local social entrepreneurs to understand their mindsets and the heartbeat of this new breed of do-gooders.

For example, partnering with Gawad Kalinga, a Philippine-based charity organisation, BZSE students stayed with villagers in Philippines for four days. There, they helped out with Gawad Kalinga’s poverty alleviation projects such as building houses enabling slum dwellers a home in the houses, studying child nutrition programs, and conducting surveys with the dwellers as part of a research projects in a BZSE module.

The diploma also includes a mentoring system where students work with successful local and global social entrepreneurs and even have them intern for five months at their social enterprises in the students’ third and final year. Guest lecturers and mentors include Dr Andreas Heinecke the founder of Dialogue Social Enterprise (International), Jack Sim from the World Toilet Organisation, Kenny Low from O School, Hazel Menon from Immanuel Beauty School and Alfie Othman from Ikhlas Catering.

“We see more of the younger generation coming up with their own ideas of tackling problems instead of relying on authorities to take care of them.

“Social entrepreneurship is one creative way they do good in their own way and we should encourage them,” said Alfie, who is interested in the education of the younger generation in social entrepreneurship and guest lectured at BZSE. He sits on the Social Entrepreneurship Committee as well as the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee.

A former banker who left the private sector to help set up Ikhlas Catering, Alfie added that people now expect more out of their careers.

Beyond commercial success and financial gain, the younger generation wants to serve the community too. And students from this course get to enjoy precisely this advantage of being educated for both business and social sectors.

“We hope to produce BZSE graduates who understand both sectors – social and business, and who can also help bridge the employment gap of supply for managers in the social sector with business skills,” said Joyce, “Students from BZSE have a heart to want to make positive social change, understand the (social enterprise) scene, have the relevant business skills and so they can help in this area. Or they can also go into either the business or the social sector.”

Or they could also set up their own social enterprises just like Justine with mentoring from his school lecturers and advice from his mentors from the school mentoring program with local social entrepreneurs. His team and he were paired up with Mr Kenny Low from O School and were given valuable advice from the latter.

Justine and his two Selfless Shoes teammates have since received a $25,000 grant from winning the Mayor’s Imagine Fund social entrepreneurship competition and are in the midst of setting up a social enterprise of a shop.

Said Justine: “It excites me to be able to bring the world of business and the world of charity together for good. I hope more people get to do what I do too. That is, learning and actually making a difference.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Feature Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.