The third annual forum on Social Enterprise, a two-day-long conference, titled ‘Social Enterprise: Collaboration For Impact’ was the third of its kind. The conference, organized by British Council in collaboration with the Access to Information (A2i) and other players in Space including Dnet, Better Stories, team engine and Future Startup, a combination of keynotes, talks, panels, and mind-blowing conversations took place at the British Council, 5 Fuller Road, Dhaka.
The attracted policy makers, social entrepreneurs, ecosystem players, investors, practitioners and stakeholders from Bangladesh and abroad. Below are a few interesting quotes from the Forum.
Profit is what drives scale, and scale is what makes an impact. Impact without sustainability and scale does not make sense! Talking about profit is never a crime, it shouldn’t be. Create value, make money, and grow.
Dr. Ananya Raihan, CEO, Dnet
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Poverty is not god sent - it is a social construct. It occurs due to exclusion from health, education and finance.
Muhammad A. (Rumee) Ali, Chief Executive, Bangladesh International Arbitration Centre (BIAC)
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The power of storytelling is vital for social enterprises. It creates an emotional bridge between consumers and businesses.
Peter Holbrook, Chief Executive, Social Enterprise UK
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What can we do when the policies aren’t there yet? Do we wait? No, we can’t afford to wait. Act now! We don’t need the government to place the policies for us. The social enterprise community can come together and decide their own.
Dr Amanda Kiessel, Co-Founder, Good Market, Sri Lanka
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Small is beautiful, big is necessary.
Naveed Akbar, Head of Strategy, Enterprise, BRAC, Bangladesh
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We are focusing on the business climate of our country. We currently stand at 176th out of 189 countries in the world bank’s doing business index. In order to improve that we are dealing with every aspect of the ease of doing business into consideration. We intend to achieve a ranking below 99 within the next 5 years. We are aiming for the first 10 countries, such as New Zealand for example, in terms of regimes, institutions, processes, policies. I can assure you that a lot is happening, we will see a very different Bangladesh soon; one that we haven’t seen yet.
Kazi M Aminul Islam, Executive Chairman, Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), Prime Minister’s Office, Government of the people’s republic of Bangladesh
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Culturally we are not used to encouraging initiatives which fail. We tend to take failure negatively. But that’s not going to help us with progress. There will be failures but you need to stand up, get over it and try again. You will get there eventually. It’s the mindset that needs to change, not just government policies.
Tina Jabeen, Investment Advisor, Startup Bangladesh, ICT Division, Government of the people’s republic of Bangladesh
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Note: Future Startup was a strategic partner of this year’s event.
