When I heard the presenters speak about their nonprofit organizations during the class what I really noticed was the importance of volunteers and the work they put in. It really made me think about how nonprofits that try to help the bee populations really rely on volunteers and their efforts to help bees as well.

When I consider my topic through this lens I think I really need to focus on the number of people who are helping bees by volunteering their time and if there is a huge need for more people. This would help my understanding of my issue because then I can see if what I can do to help would not only include volunteering my own time but also trying to reach out to others to volunteer as well.

Like I’ve stressed this far the reliance on volunteer work and the need for them is my biggest take away from the class session. Nonprofits really make their differences in their issue because of other people in the community who care as well, they can’t do it alone.

Personally, I think something I could do to really help bees is, like I said before, to volunteer my own time to help nonprofits benefit bees and also maybe communicate to others out in the community and try to ask them to do the same. This way I not only can help directly by volunteering but also indirectly by recruiting more people to help. Not only can I get more people to help but by communicating to the public I also get the word out about the nonprofit and about the issues surrounding bees.

What I heard from the guest speaker in class about social entrepreneurship didn’t really change my view of my issue through the lens. I did see how social entrepreneurship is heavy on helping people rather than making a profit. I thought that making a profit would be more important to the business but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Concerning my issue, social enterprises that focus on honeybees really are there to help bees repopulate and live successfully in the wild and in the artificial bee hives instead of trying to make a profit off bees. Something additional I should look at is if social enterprises are really taking action to help address the source of the issue instead of passively aiding.

My biggest takeaway from the class was I learned that nonprofit is just a tax distinction and social enterprise is a philosophy which I didn’t know before.  I also learned that some businesses who claim that they are helping an issue don’t do a very good job at helping a cause, for example donating a mattress to a shelter for every one sold. It is better for an enterprise to address the root of the problem and tackle it at the source.

I personally would like to find volunteer opportunities to help with social enterprises that are trying to aid bees. In the TED talk I found I saw a lot of volunteers helping the businesses build gardens and hives for the bees and I would be very interested in doing work like that.

One particular non-profit I looked at called the Honeybee Conservancy does a few things to try to impact the decline of honeybee populations. One way they do this is they provide education to the public about bees and their importance. They are available to visit classrooms and have field trips to one of their many locations. During these educational opportunities, the Honeybee Conservancy have hives for adults and children to observe bees at work in a safe learning environment. They also fund honeybee research done by The Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility  in attempt to find better ways to conserve them. Lastly, they have a Sponsor-a-Hive program where they will donate hives, beekeeper gear, and bees to communities that have gardens that would benefit with a sustained bee population.

There is one main important thing that comes to mind when I think about nonprofits and honeybees. It is important to consider the need of support from the general public. Nonprofits need donations to provide for research and programs to help honeybees, so they can’t do it alone. Nonprofits also couldn’t thrive without volunteers helping with projects like planting bee gardens or giving presentations to schools about honeybees.

One way someone could get involved with the Honeybee Conservancy nonprofit in particular  is making a donation to help them provide for the programs they offer like the education and research. Another way one could support them is to organize field trips to their locations to help bring students and other groups to them to learn about the importance of bees. Some challenges may be raising enough money to make a considerable donation to this organization. Some people may not see this issue as important and may not donate money or time to help out. Another issue would be the difficulty organizing trips to their centers. Not many schools have the ability to send students on field trips because of school funding or other roadblocks.

Nonprofits have different levels one could participate at that would correlate to the “Justice-Oriented Citizen” model. On the “Personally Responsible Citizen” level you would have people making donations to the nonprofit every so often to help them fund their programs. On the “Participatory Citizen” level would be people organizing group field trips to visit nonprofit centers to learn about their missions and the importance of their goals. On the “Social Justice-Oriented Citizen” level would be the people who are running these nonprofits in order to make an impact on the issue they are going to focus on like the honeybee population decline for instance.

I looked at a few videos of representatives of small non profits describing what they do in their nonprofit does to help honeybees. One thing that stuck out to me was how involved with beekeeping these nonprofits are. In every video I saw people working to create healthy bee colonies that will thrive in their area. Each nonprofit expressed that one of their key goals was to provide education about bees to the public as well. One nonprofit, The Sustainable Honeybee Program , focused also on training their keepers to pay attention to the behavior of their bees to make sure they are thriving and adapting to their environments well enough to be healthy. Another nonprofit, Baltimore Honey, emphasized the importance of providing only the best habitat and resources for their bee colonies like not using smoke while harvesting and giving them only real flower nectar for food.

Social enterprise can be described as a company that uses business methods to advance a social or environmental issue and make a profit. Some social enterprises, specifically those in Europe, are training unemployed citizens to be beekeepers in urban areas to help bring up bee populations in the area. They are also donating hives and bees to local communities to help provide habitat for bees in urban areas. These social enterprises are also bringing awareness to the locals about the declining bee population and teaching them how they can help the bees by planting flowers for the bees in the area to pollinate.

I could get more involved with my issue when I support social enterprises in a few ways. I could help donate money to support their efforts to educate people about bee population decline. I could get involved by educating people myself alongside a social enterprise to bring awareness. I could advertise a certain social enterprise that I think are doing the best at helping bees to the public to gain more support. Some challenges could be getting the public sphere to listen and understand the issues concerning the decline with bees. Bees are a very important part of our way of life and without them everything would collapse. Some people don’t understand how important they are or how urgent the need to save them is. Another challenge would be raising money to donate to social enterprises. By raising money I am getting more involved with my issue but by myself I can’t make a sizable donation. This would require also educating the masses about the issue and most people would argue that other issues are more worth their time and money and may not contribute.

There are some important things to consider when viewing this issue through a social enterprise lens. One would be that in order to make a difference you need to have support from the public as I have emphasized before. Not only do you need money to support the cause but you also need manpower to carry out programs you intend to help the bees. Another important thing to keep in mind is the methods in which you advertise your message. Social enterprises use business methods to market their cause. In order to have a business you need to advertise what it is you’re doing. If you advertise well enough and to as many people as possible you can get that well needed support for the bees that you’re looking for.

In a social enterprise there are participants who operate on different levels of the “Justice-Oriented Citizen Model”. On the level of “Personally Responsible” I would put the people who would donate some money to a social enterprise cause when asked to. On the “Participatory Citizen” level would be the people going door to door educating people about an issue or organizing a fundraiser for the issue. On the “Social-Justice Oriented Citizen” level I would put the people in the social enterprise who identify ways to address the issues causes and comes up with projects to help solve the issue.

The TED talk I found featured two women representatives from The Honey Club which is a social enterprise that raises bees and creates gardens for the bees and sells the honey to benefit bees and the continuation of their business. The main things I noticed from their presentation was how much was done in the business because of local “young people” volunteers. They had a lot of teenage volunteers who would basically transform an area into a garden and by doing that they helped the business provide a habitat for bees but they also changed who they were for the better. One volunteer wrote to The Honey Club after she volunteered saying that it really impacted her. She felt more comfortable working with adults and she is also more comfortable being around bees.