My well-wishers in the cabinet, as well as senior bureaucrats, often tell me that I should not have been so vocal in my support of Professor Muhammad Yunus.
A distinguished adviser to the honourable prime minister felt that unbiased and professional studies undertaken in our universities would obviously reveal the inefficacy of microfinance as a sustainable tool for the eradication of poverty. If necessary, he was ready to manage some funding too.
I was unsure when I was invited to attend the 6th Global Social Business Summit being held in Mexico City. I was only able to make a decision at the last moment, hence everything was jeopardised regarding travel and accommodations.
It was a cumbersome journey from Dhaka to Mexico City, beginning at the earliest hours and ending in the wee hours of the night.
When I arrived the next morning, on November 27, the only word I could utter was “wow.” 750 people, social entrepreneurs to be precise, who believe in the philosophy of “social business” as a modern tool for creating synergy at the bottom of the pyramid, assembled in Mexico City’s Expo Bancomer, to listen to, review, and possibly reiterate the social business model as an efficient tool for employment-generation for innovative and creative people.
Young, energetic, and creative people from 60 countries had assembled to vow to take the world forward, turn the youths not into job-seekers, but job-givers.
Banamex (the local subsidiary of Citigroup), Cemex (a leading cement company), the economy minister of Mexico, finance secretary of Mexico City, CEO of Danone from France, Germany's Grameen Creative Lab, many vice chancellors and professors from Canada, Australia, Germany, and Scotland who have been housed in either the Yunus Center or its Social Business Lab, and of course many vibrant, forward-looking young men and women all vowed to make this world more liveable, tolerant, and wealthy with distributive justice through their innovation and creativity.
Hans Reitz, Enrique Rocha Jacob, Alejandro Peñaloza Garza, Nathalie von Siemens, Kerry Kennedy, and many other famous individuals who were already known for championing Yunus’s “social business” model, expressed their commitment in taking this forward.
Social Business is an emerging concept that Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus developed, telling us that “job” is to be a right for the youth in this world. Professor Yunus came up with this tool to have “unemployment be unemployed” in this world.
He believes the corporate bigwigs should come forward to allocate a small portion of their created wealth or profit for being invested for the creation of socially responsible enterprises which can generate employment for the enterprising and creative youth, and let them enjoy the success of their creative thinking through the entrepreneurship route.
At the end of the day, the bigwigs can take away their equity invested in the new business, but not the profit or the dividend. The profit or dividend will be recycled to create more businesses, more enterprises, more young entrepreneurs, and most importantly, more employment.
The summit demonstrated the many successes of this model through the youths in Columbia, Haiti, Paraguay, Malaysia, Germany, Kenya, and Bangladesh. In the focus group discussions, we got to hear from the youths in Russia, Egypt, Malaysia, and many other countries opting for the social business route to foster youth entrepreneurship.
Though, for obvious reasons, I was part asleep and part awake, I watched, with much amazement, the musical show which was put on by the team from Paraguay, playing with recycled orchestra instruments made out of garbage. When the young anchor was telling the crowd “the world sends us garbage, we give them music,” I was left near speechless.
The summit did talk a lot about regenerating social GDP, provoking required changes in the community, social cooperatives, sharing the power of ideas, seed-funding start-ups, and most importantly, about how “failure is a great teacher.”
Kerry Kennedy reminded us that “social business is not a transaction, it’s a transformation.” We had reasons to be enthralled when we got to hear about Canada’s McGill University offering a minor in “social business” at the undergraduate level, which too came up due to pressure from their students and researchers.
The world seems to be rising again with the help of social business, creativity, and innovation in order to make it a better place for our children. And bear in mind that it is our Muhammad Yunus who is making this happen.
The world is listening no more. We are increasingly getting engaged in this drive towards a better future for all, especially the disadvantaged community.
