Comment 4 on 1000 citizen yunus forums & Capitalism's Future

Jeff

Small world.

There's a group including Sofia planning to get together in London during November for an LLP workshop. She seems quite taken with the model, and can see the potential for "micro-investment" as opposed to "micro-credit".

As you know, we have developed a partnership-based enterprise model of the type that Yunus describes as "Not for Loss".

Simple, but radical.

Best Regards

Chris

Jeff Mowatt said:

Chris, Sofia in Brixton interested me as this was my childhood home. As you know P-CED have been social business advocates for some time, having sourced a full cost recovery project in Russia over 5 years.

I'm reminded that leaving this part of London to be able to keep running a social business was something I found necessary a couple of years ago.

Right now , the major problem that social business faces is one that affects all self sustaining small businesses, being paid on time. This is particular bad for those of us who have contracts with government. I have two government departments who've held up payment for a year, for example.

This runs completely to the same governments support for social enterprise, which to those working without being paid is simply empty rhetoric. I'd like some support for my Pay on Time campaign which is something our goverment still drags it's heels on.

How can we export our values to the developing world I ask, when how we practice business at home, is to take delivery and avoid payment? That in most cultures would simply be regarded as theft. It's not a good grounding if we hope to tackle the problem of corruption elsewhere without doing something about our own.

Jeff