Social entrepreneurship to be popularised in Sri Lanka
Social entrepreneurship is to be popularised in Sri Lanka with the aim of uplifting the living standard of the marginalised sector and lower economic classes with little or no access to the resources needed to build their future.
This initiative has been taken by Dr. Darin Gunasekera, the architect behind the setting up of first Sri Lanka’s stock exchange in 1981 and the originator of a concept for sustainable Slum and Shanty dweller re-housing using the capital market in 1998. In an interview with the Business Times, he noted that the development of a social enterprise economy will enable greater social enterprise and actions leading to greater happiness to the people of the country than “Development” as understood by the World Bank and similar paradigms of economics of the recent past.
Medical services to the marginalised sectors are one of the areas which he is considering for Sri Lanka. Under his social entrepreneurship initiative by providing health and medical services to poor and marginalised people, the latter can enjoy a better quality of life, he said.
Social entrepreneurship is relatively new for Sri Lanka. This term is generally applied to economically sustainable internally self sufficient programmes of social action, he pointed out.
With the change in governance in Sri Lanka, the time is opportune to create awareness on social entrepreneurship for the benefit of the country in a productive manner, he added.
Social entrepreneurship is nothing more than offering innovative solutions to significant problems within a society. When you look at it that way, social entrepreneurship really isn’t all that different from the kind of entrepreneurship that is driven solely by the desire for financial profit.
It’s just a different way of channelling the psychological energy one puts into a business. Instead of focusing on making money, an individual focuses on serving the needs of his customers. Seen from that perspective, social entrepreneurship isn’t dreamy and utopian, it’s just good business, he said.
Dr. Gunasekera originated a concept for sustainable Slum and Shanty dweller re-housing using the Capital Market in 1998. The resultant project was called REEL.
He advised the project through the completion of its first cycle of housing and land liberation by the end of 2000.
In the light of experience and work in several countries, this has been refined to the S-REIT or Social Real Estate Investment Trust method. This programme now also includes the livelihoods of the marginalised. His ideas have reached official national acceptance in India, Philippines and Kenya as well as in Sri Lanka.
He is an Ashoka Fellow of India. He has been awarded the Silver Medal of the USA Bar. He appeared in human rights cases in Supreme Courts himself.
Dr. Gunesekera has convened a conference in Colombo on March 3 under the theme “Economic Justice through Social Entrepreneurs to Create an Exchange for Social Entrepreneurs in Economic, Financial and Housing Human Rights”.
The conference is intended to bring in interested social entrepreneurs, including those wishing to enter the field, in contact with outstanding social entrepreneurs in the region.
“We hope that this will help us create a hub or exchange place or mechanism for further contact through which social enterprises can grow,” he said.
Discussions at the conference will be centred on “Human Rights in Economics, Finance and Housing. Affordable and Livable Housing and Neighbourhoods Social Justice in the Economy and Finance and its regulation and encouragement by the State Countering Corruption, Bribery, Abuse of Power, Drugs and Vice Social Entrepreneurship practice”.