A blog by @ooak

It's a place for me to give birth to my thoughts. Meta thoughts about "Steemit", external thoughts about life and experiences. My aim is to bring value to people, entertain the audience and craft my writing skills all at the same time. I will write short to medium size blogs because I believe that today more than ever time is money and attention is hard to get.

Few years ago I read a book by the Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus called "Creating a world without poverty". In the book Yunus tells his story of how he managed to build a social business. His business had helped millions of poor people in his country of Bangladesh. He also defines the term "Social business" and how it can help create a better world.

The story of Yunus is interesting. He observed young women who had to borrow from loan sharks. They did it because they had to buy materials to build products. Those products then were sold on the market and helped sustain their families. The problem was that the interest rates were so high that they were "imprisoned" by the loans and had to keep loaning and repaying debt. The women couldn't borrow from traditional banks so they has to resort to high interest rate loans.

Yunus toke things to his own hands and decided to loan 27$ to 42 women. He believed they will repay him. Long story short he began loaning to women who he considered as more responsible and will use use the money for health and education. After a few years he created "Grameen Bank" ("village bank) as a social business. To this day the bank micro -loaned billions of dollars to poor people around the world.

Social business as Yunus defines has 7 principals:

1. Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization.

2. Financial and economic sustainability.

3. Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money.

4. When investment amount is paid back, company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement.

5. Gender sensitive and environmentally conscious.

6. Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions.

7. do it with joy.

So you can see that a social business is a different animal than a regular one. It puts social objectives at the top of the pyramid together with financial sustainability. The meaning is you have to profit and use the profits to pursue your social goal. No dividends.

In my opinion social businesses are perfect for today's day and age. We can observe more people seeking how to better society and helping others than just profiting. Developing a social business isn't different than a regular one; you have to profit to stay open. That is why I think it's the ultimate business; you try to reach a social goal while winning financially. The better financially your business the more you can help others.

Shower Thought: Steemit can create social change by kick-starting social businesses.

@ooak signing out…

#steemit #steem #blog #writing #social