Social Entrepreneurship Conference kicked off

Kathmandu, June 30: A two-day social entrepreneurship conference underwent in the capital on Thursday.

King’s College has organised the conference with the theme, ‘Rebuilding Nepal through Social Entrepreneurship’ in association with more than 30 social enterprises with an aim of maximizing direct social benefits.

With more than 400 delegates, social entrepreneurs, media-persons, corporate representatives, and management learners attending, the Conference presented some seven foreign speakers in total from the UK, Sweden, India and Singapore, both academics and practitioners, and a host of stalwarts of the sector from Nepal.

Presenting his keynote address, Professor Jay Mitra of the University of Essex Business School, UK, differentiated between regular business entrepreneurship with that of social and citizen entrepreneurship.

He said that social entrepreneurship was distinct due to its social value, inclusiveness, sustainability, localization and broad-based stake-holding.

Professor Mitra explained with several examples of such enterprises from the energy and fishery sectors from Europe and Africa that those social enterprises were not just another entity of a certain group of committed people but that which led to reconstruction, adaptability and transformation in a locality.

“Such enterprises can lead to building social networks, developing activity cycles, creating mental models and increasing product constellations in the process,” he said. 

Tourism entrepreneur, writer and social worker Karna Shakya noted that his life mission even at his present advanced age was to help the youths imbibing the spirit of entrepreneurship.

He cited examples to prove how a successful social venture could change the economic face of a region and why limited investments led social enterprises are increasingly necessary in Nepal.

King's College Executive Director Narottam Aryal raised the discourse on 'compassionate capitalism' as a route to empower social entrepreneurs.

An exhibition of the social enterprises is being organized on the sidelines of the conference where about 30 practitioners have been participating.

A study on the state and profile of social enterprises and social entrepreneurship in Nepal was presented in the conference.

The report was presented by Chittaranjan Pandey and Upasna Acharya from the King's research wing, and has been supported by Social Enterprise Activation Centre (Korea), Korean International Cooperation Agency and Work Together Foundation.

The study concluded that there was male and Newar dominance in entrepreneurship in the Kathmandu Valley which started from 1965 and younger population below 40 years of age were largely in enterprise creation.

The study has shown that the government support is very minimal in spite of the fact that there was a strong potential for the social enterprises to help solve problems associated with agriculture, education, health, unemployment and poverty.

The study recommended that the government should identify social enterprise as a separate entity like public or private enterprises with the support of banks and financial institutions coming in.

“Special training packages needed to be developed for the impact based Lean Canvas Business Model and business plan preparation,” read the report.