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.