Yesterday I was invited to a birthday party of a very good friend of mine. We had a wonderful time together, and the unexpected was that I met a woman named Bitten Hogh. She was one of the guests, Danish origin but has been living and working in China for 14 years. Through her and one of her colleagues who was also at the party, Jan, I got to know about their wonderful effort: Thread of Yunnan. It is a social project designed to raise the standard of living of countryside women in Yunnan Province, China, while raising their self-esteem and helping to preserve their traditional handicrafts. At the moment they have also a tea project and they are looking for distributors/ buyers etc. Please learn more about it by click on http://www.threadsofyunnan.com/
When I asked Jan what he would think as the biggest challenge when working with a social project like this- his answer confirmed one of my beliefts. In many cases, we tend to think social enterprise as an organization that always in shortage of resources from a financially perspective. This is true because as a non-profit organization or a social enterprise, you won’t have the same financial resources to get the necessary investments. And your profit margin is definitely lower than traditional businesses. So yes, this is a challenge, but not the biggest one. The biggest challenge is actually about dealing with the differences in mentality and understandings between the western and the local approach about how to create social change. It is not only about implementing innovative western solutions and helping the local from the western point of view. It is also neither about accepting the situation and let the local people continuing to be in the vicious circle when there is new knowledge to learn and new ways to improve things. It is about creating a balance that brings about social improvements- and this must be created in a space where new knowledge can be nurtured, inspired and at the same time; truly acknowledge and satisfy the needs of the local community and bring out real changes for the local people. This is definitely not easy sine changing mentality is one of the tougest challenges that one can meet in life. It requires courage, passion and patience- definitely lots of it!
