Reference no: EM132866321
Read the article below and answer the questions that follow.
The British Council supports social enterprise initiatives all over the world. It draws its expertise and skills from the United Kingdom, dubbed as having the most progressive social business models and structures for social enterprises. Roughly, the social enterprise sector contributes £24 billion in the British economy.
Recently, the British Council made reports about social enterprises in the Philippines. The reports reveal that there is a need for the Philippines to increase the presence of social enterprises which will strengthen social services. It also identifies a shortage of employees that are equipped with business skills, which has hampered the growth of social enterprises in the country. These skills include accounting, business development and management, legal, tax, marketing logistics, and distribution. To fulfill its mission, a social enterprise must have a strong backbone to bring excellent services and products to its clients. A strong backbone consists of skilled employees who will render excellent customer service, to optimize revenue.
It supports young social entrepreneurs through capacity-building and creativity-building competitions. Additionally, it provides new approaches in social services and supports the course program in higher education.
In the United Kingdom, a social enterprise is defined as a business with a social purpose or objectives and whatever surplus it generates is reinvested in the business to help sustain the communities it adopts. The surpluses are not distributed to the owners.
The Philippines has no definite meaning for a social enterprise except for the one developed by the Social Entrepreneurship in Asia which targets the poor as the primary beneficiary of social services. With these target beneficiaries, majority of the social enterprises in the Philippines h s the product-based rather than service-based. Those that are product-based focus on e livelihood of the community members. The most popular ones are Rags2Riches and Coffee for Peace in Davao. Rags2Riches has trained over 800 craftsmen to weave rags and clothing scraps and transform them to stylish products. Coffee for Peace in Davao is a coffee shop that buys coffee from local producers at a higher price. There is a lack of service-based social enterprises specifically in health, education, water, and sanitation services.
1. What is the current situation of social enterprises in the Philippines?
2. What are the problems on social enterprise that should be addressed in our country?