Social Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurship: The Key to the Sustainability of BALUD

The major challenge of many initiatives and organizations in the current times is how to sustain projects and programs. Maintaining sustainability may depend on many aspects such as interest of the individuals running the programs, interest of the beneficiaries and donors, or inflow of resources. Related to sustainability is the perennial question we ask ourselves as organizations—when do we end our interventions?

Sustainability is not an easy question to tackle. Yet, BALUD as an organization always try its best to put in place sustainability in all its initiatives. Projects which assist communities, such as The Balud Project, is one of the crucial components of our endeavours since we are dealing with a group of people, specially children, who would need the assistance of the project to bring change in their lives for a longer period of time. This is why we always look for sustainability measures to keep the activities going even if we leave the community in the future.

The most important tool to put in place sustainability is the use of the concept of social entrepreneurship. We engage ourselves with the definition of a social entrepreneur as someone who understands a social problem and make use of entrepreneurial principles to create social change. How are we going to do that in BALUD and in the Balud Project in particular?

Our resource generation at first relied on personal initiatives. Our funds started with personal donations from family members and friends. The value of Euro donations was very good when brought to developing countries. Back then the Project was simple assistance to the school beneficiary. One of the volunteers who graduated from his PhD opted to channel his graduation gifts to the Balud Project instead to take them personally. He raised 1200 Euros and then we were able to start throwing the rusty chairs of the school and building new ones. Our actions were started to be noted. One good-spirited American who saw the plight of the children poured his heart out by providing a personal donation of 1000 USD. We were amazed by our own actions and the support generated by the school. We told ourselves we can do more than just personal linkages. Thus we embarked on bolder resource generation activities.

We got a grant from Finland to build a multipurpose hall and library. We received money from UK to assist in the teaching of science to the students. We received material donations such as books, satellite dish and television connected to the Knowledge Channel, audio-visual materials, etc. We started writing project proposals. Some were successful and some were not. We noticed however that the money we collect, once spent for the projects, are gone after. We told ourselves that this is not the sustainability scheme we will work with.

The paradigm changed. We got a condominium property whose owner agreed to donate the rent to BALUD until the time that the project exists. This was a big relief for us since every month money comes in to the project. This provided us ideas of the next actions. The village has big potential for an eco-tourism. Why not develop a resort that will make use of the beautiful nature for tourists to experience at the same the employing the villagers and creating a steady income for the BALUD and the beneficiaries. The other major plan is to build low-rent dormitories for university students in the city who come from far away places. Such a scheme will help provide cheap city accommodations for students and the income will go to the projects.

BALUD is also investing on the skills of the beneficiaries. Entrepreneurial skills will be taught to the villagers backed up by microfinance schemes. BALUD will also be strong in promoting social entrepreneurship to the wider audience of young people and women through its conferences and trainings.

BALUD has to be bolder in its resource generation schemes specially when more projects are being developed to attain our goals. One of such bold steps is to use social entrepreneurship as a key tool.

(Venture philanthropy is another tool that BALUD will use in tandem with Imperial BlueCube)