Social Enterprise:Journalism in denial

I wrote recently of how academia denies social enterprise innovation , but they'r not alone.

A recent article in the Guardian describes business which has migrated to social enterprise. This is what P-CED had done in 2004, when introducing the profit-for-purpose social enterprise model to the UK.

It derived from the 1996 paper which suggested the concept to President Clinton saying:

"The P-CED concept is to create new businesses that do things differently from their inception, and perhaps modify existing businesses that want to do it. This business model entails doing exactly the same things by which any business is set up and conducted in the free-market system of economics. The only difference is this: that at least fifty percent of profits go to stimulate a given local economy, instead of going to private hands."

I offered our example of leveraging microenterprise in Russia to thee APPG for social enterprise and the APPG for microfinance. Only the latter replied to say that they could not accomodate our presentation in their upcoming meeting.   

Soon after introducing our work to Baroness Thorton,, then chair of the Social Enterprise Coalition and member ot the APPG on social enterprise we would see the arrival of the Community Interest Company, a variation on the same theme.        

In 2006, having joined the Social Enterprise Coaltion (now SEUK)  I introduced our work to be told that it was outside their current focus.

"We’re proposing a business mix of revenue positive and revenue neutral activities toward a major social objective, the funding of group care homes for all Ukraine’s economic orphans and street children. Our target for external seed funding will be the Millenium Challenge account for transitional democracy. Additionally we propose a new faculty for Social Enterprise in one of Ukraine’s state universities. 

All of this will be based on the successful social purpose model for which proof of concept was delivered in the Tomsk project.  I’d like to be able to talk to others in the UK about this.

You”ll find more about us on https://p-ced.com/"

 

Now I've come to expect this kind of partiality in social enterprise journalism.over the years, but what the same journalist had to say on Children's Rights in another article really ecapsulates what I've been talking about. Unicef had reported that children's rights were not seen as a priority for business. 

It was the fortune of the man who conceived and pioneered the purpose driven business I describe, and put into action, to have died in his efforts to champion the case of children's rights. In his notes and my subsequent observations he describes how Unicef were wilfully blind to the plight of children in 'Death Camps'

The article by Tim Smedley may be found in the Unicef sponsored hub on children's rights. 

I'd already contacted the Guardian editor about another article on the British Council hub, I described how we'd introduced the same work to them.  

Though the Guardian denies sponsor partiality, I'm seeing more evidence to the contrary.

When the story of Torez, the location of the Death Camps article eventually reached mainstream media in the Sunday Times, we were all guilty of neglect for or deliberate blindness.

When Kate Blewett broadcast Ukraine's Forgotten Children last year,it was again suggested that nobody was speaking out about the issue. In 2006 The Torez story had been posted on the BBC Community Action Network and removed by moderators as inappropriate content.

The focus of the BBC4 documentary was a place called Kalinovka, though no mention was made of the man who'd been inspired by our action to speak out himself. Albert Pavlov had declared that it's not possible to keep silent.

As in war, truth has become the first casualty in social innovation, where building reputation denies all, including the existence of others.. .