Through the Lens: Social Enterprise
Social enterprise is the way an organization applies their commercial strategies in order to improve the overall quality of environmental and human well-being. Social enterprises can be either for or not for profit, and can encompass many different structures in their existence. There are many instances of social enterprises adding into the fight for clean, safe water, one of which being charity organizations created for our own local water crisis in Flint, Michigan (ex. helpforflint.com) that lead in donations and keeping the people being affected up to date on the tests being put on the water and the state that everything is in. Outside of the U.S., countless more social enterprises are leading the fight in countries that have very little water, or very little clean water, such as NextDrop in Bangalore,India. This social enterprise lets citizens know when their water is working and works hand-in-hand with the water providers in collecting data.
Challenges that these social enterprises face is, as many organizations face, money and backing. Many people want to help, but without donations and the proper funds to go about their projects as safely and as true-to-image as they can, it’s difficult to operate as much as they would like. It’s also extremely expensive to clean water and make it more accessible, especially in countries with very little water sources. With this factor, it’s likely that social enterprises will only be able to focus their projects on one area of a city or village, needing more funding in order to branch out more.
Some of the most important things to consider when thinking on my issue through social enterprise are: do these social enterprises focus on improving water quality immediately only? Do they also focus on implementing water protection laws? More specifically through the lens of a social enterprise, how much of an area can be cleaned? Can local people be employed to help in the effort to keep the water clean? How long will it be until an obvious change in access to clean water will be seen? It’s also important to think about the community itself and what they use the water for, and adapting the organization based on their culture.
Through the social justice model, it’s quite easy to see what’s being done. Citizens can donate water bottles and money to crises like the one in Flint,Michigan, or put their money towards the fundings of enterprises such as NextDrop. A participatory citizen is something that I myself have done, in which I have led a cleanup of the local reservoir near my home (Hoover Reservoir) and also taught those who came to clean about the problems with algae and water-cleaning that we have had in the past. A social-justice oriented citizen begins can be seen through every person who has created a social enterprise, someone who sees that people are suffering through lack of proper water and finding out why. NextDrop focuses on lowering the amount of time that people in Bangalore have to wait for their water, as well as slowly improving just how long during the day their limited water will be provided to them. They understand that the people in India have limited, intermittent water access and are working to gather data to find the best way possible to improve their situation.