extract from new yunus book http://www.publicaffairsbooks.co m/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/dis play?book=9781586484934

Social Action - could this be a viral wave of our life and times? what do you think?

Yunus writes:

Having a dream about a better world is fun. Why not interact to help make the reality closer too? My suggestion: create a small organisation we call a Social Action Forum. It can be as small as three people who band together to address a single, manageable local problem. If others want to join that’s fine. But if you feel comfortable with three, don’t try to expand that number

I am planning to create a website where you can register your social action forum. On the website, you can describe your plan for the year, record you thoughts, mention the frustrations and excitement of your work, show the progress you are making, and display pictures relating to your project. To start a Forum –all you need is the willingness and initiative to make a difference.

You might start a forum around a neighbourhood improvement. Or if you live in a developing country, the action forum might be built around helping a beggar find a job or self-employment. Some social action forums may remain small, operate for 2 or 3 years and then disband. Others may grow bigger and bigger, and some may become successful businesses.. An idea from one forum may inspire other forums to replicate the idea. A few forums may grow into major programs with the potential to transform societies.

Aside from launching a Social Action Forum, there are may steps that individuals can take to help promote the social-business idea. If you are a teacher, you could help launch a course to teach young business people about social business. If you are a member of a civic or faith group, you could help arrange a series of lectures, meetings or conferences about opportunities for social businesses in your community. If you help to oversee a pension fund, you can propose that part of those resources be set aside to invest in social business. And of course, if you are a business executive, you can explain to your CEO the value of creating a social business.

One way to generate social business ideas is to host competitions. Any organisation or person can sponsor such a competition: a school, a foundation, a chamber of commerce, a civic group and so on. I can picture local, regional and even global competitions with hundreds of thousands of participants vying to create the most practical, ambitious and exciting concepts for social business. Prizes for the best business designs could include investment funding for the project, or connections to social investors. All the proposals submitted could be published on the internet to inspire the designers of subsequent competitions or to provide ideas for entrepreneurs who want to start social businesses.

I have been promoting the idea of a social-business competition for a while, and now the Taiwanese magazine Business Weekly has announced such a competition. It has raised $1.5 million to provide seed money for the top 10 submissions, which will be announced November 2007. I am absolutely delighted by this initiative.