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“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do”

‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ – Harper Lee

 

 

 

Scenario:

A request for support from government with an international social enterprise development proposal is declined. Two years later an initiative to do the same thing in the same country becomes a public/private partnership. The initiative solicits partners, but disregards an application from the original project designers.

The primary focus of the original proposal is the human rights issue of disabled children who are neglected in state care. This focus potentially undermines plans for expanding EU free trade zones.

On raising this issue with MP Mark Harper, we learn that qualification as partners is dependent on the ability to provide investment capital..    

 

The term People-Centered Economic Development derives from the work of Carl R Rogers and his advocacy for a person-centered approach to therapy. Given access to the necessary resources, he believed, people could resolve their own problems flourish and grow.

People-Centered economics is therefore about inserting these ideas into business and economics. Each community needs access to information resources (hyperlocal networks) and resources for creation of community funding enterprises for profit, with profits to be applied to social needs in addition to private wealth creation (social business)

 

Just as the US now heavily uses smart bombs in warfare, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the equivalent is needed in aid efforts. It is not enough to spend, say, US$ 7 million dollars for five Tomahawk cruise missiles and then spend a fraction of that amount in building a peaceful community which does not merit targeting by missiles. Yet, that is what we have in this case.

 

The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”