Terence Yuen is a lecturer at the Community College of City University in Hong Kong, and an avid observer of the Social Entrepreneurship movement in Hong Kong. In 2007, Terence’s research culminated in a comparative study of three cities – Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei that was presented at the SEforum 2007. We catch up with Terence in Hong Kong as he shares with us his thoughts on Hong Kong’s SE development.

Some people may consider the three Social enterprises (SE) that I present here as “outliers”. True, they are hardly profiled, but in my opinion they characterise the potential for social entrepreneurship in Hong Kong (HK).

Unlike HK’s SE stratum which is dominated by mostly work-integration social enterprises that are largely encouraged by preferential government policy; these three SEs are driven by young social entrepreneurs who identified a market gap, felt deeply uneasy about the social situation they saw, and undertook it upon themselves to try to make a difference. In doing so, they challenge existing norms; work against existing practices, and set in motion new social and cultural norms.

1. Non-Profit-Making Veterinary Services Society Ltd (NPVSS)

Humans are not the only one that deserves proper medical care.

Founder Mark Mak wanted to bring quality veterinary services within everyone’s means. He felt frustrated by the fact that many pets and their owners could not afford basic veterinary services because of the unreasonably high prices of existing animal clinics. Hence, Mark set up NPVSS in 2006 and is now running two clinics, with throngs of pet owners lining up for the pet-doctor.

A “cost plus” pricing principle is adopted by NPVSS to ensure affordable pet care, which simply means adding only a reasonable mark-up to the actual cost of services and not to “overcharge” the pet owners to maximise profits. 

On top of this, NPVSS would also offer special discounts to pet owners who are social security recipients. Instead of submitting to the view that the poor and disadvantaged should not be pet owners, NPVSS recognizes that pets are sometimes the most important companions for the socially disadvantaged especially the singleton elderly who chose to have pets for company.

2. Social Ventures Hong Kong (SVHK)

Modelled after successful venture philanthropy institutions (VPI) in other parts of the world, SVHK aims to provide financial, intellectual, and human capital support to the development of social entrepreneurship in HK. As a pioneer of venture philanthropy, one of the unique features of SVHK is its ability to blend the talents of committed young professionals and the visions of social entrepreneurs by using a high-engagement approach to create social impact across many service realms.

SVHK is a platform serving four key groups of stakeholders: visionary social investors, social entrepreneurs, engaged professionals, and devoted citizens. In the case of engaged professionals they are the knowledge volunteers and for sure, a key success factor. But instead of replicating the Social Venture Partners model from the US that emphasizes on support via the professional volunteers/social investors, the working platform of SVHK is wider and goes beyond professional volunteering.

Since its inception in late 2007, SVHK has already registered thousands of volunteer hours from its committed young members in supporting SE projects that may or may not be SVHK’s direct investees.

With over 3 years of experience, SVHK aims to gradually enlarge its SE investment portfolio. This includes Fullness Hair Salon, arguably the most successful work-integration social enterprise in HK, and Dialogue in the Dark (Did), another SE that belies great potential.

In the cases of Fullness and DiD, SVHK had their members appointed as Board members to the two SEs and playing very influential roles. For example, the SVHK appointed board member to DiD is from Disney HK and brings in a lot of experience in helping DiD set up its facility as well as run its programmes.

By testing out new ways of combining financial and social resources to tackle complicated social problems, SVHK is practicing social entrepreneurship in its core operations.

3. CNEX Foundation (CNEX)

CNEX is the short form of “Chinese Next” and pronounced as “See Next”, which is an apt name for the motto of CNEX:  “Looking for Chinese 2.0”.

CNEX came into existence in 2007 with the aim of promoting the production of documentaries related to the Chinese people. Firmly believing in the power of empathy, founder Ben Tsiang is determined to make CNEX the vehicle for people from within and beyond the Greater China region – in particular, the next generation of Chinese people [aka Chinese 2.0] – to better understand contemporary Chinese societies through documentary films.

CNEX also strives to facilitate the cultural exchange between the Chinese and the rest of the world by supporting documentaries depicting contemporary Chinese – people of Chinese ethnicity, their lives and their society. With the mission of producing 100 documentary films about China’s society change over the course of ten years, CNEX works towards its aim of establishing and developing a library of global Chinese non-fiction work, as well as to enable a sustainable strategy for the contemporary Chinese documentary making.

Founder of CNEX Ben Tisang is originally from Taiwan and is a successful IT entrepreneur. He co-founded the popular Internet search engine Sina.com and has a good grasp of the deep cultural diversity across Chinese societies.

Since CNEX was set up five years ago, 15 documentaries have been produced for the last two seasons so far.

Here are two such impactful films:

All’s Right is about poverty in HK and throughout the past two years it was screened more than 100 times in the campuses pf local universities, in community centres or NGO offices in various neighourhoods. A local NGO working on poverty issues even used the film to develop a teaching kit for the use of secondary students.

As for KJ, a biography of a talented pianist, it addresses a wide range of issues. For one, parents putting their kids to learning instruments merely for the sake of getting the certificates. Of course there are the main issues about the meaning of life, of growing up, the love between father and son and more. Through Facebook viral marketing, the film has broken the box office record for documentaries in HK. The film recently won three prizes in the prestigious Golden Horse Award in Taiwan.

Tags: Hong Kong, Media, Pets, Venture Philanthropy

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