By: Sarah Owermohle
Maybe you’ve seen the fliers. “Lebanon is an excellent place to start a business…and improve our crappy education system!” or another stating “…and stop the f%$*ing power outages!”
AltCity hosted a one-day “Business for Social Change Mini-Conference” to tackle these questions and more. Participants debated topics such as innovative entrepreneurship, creative design, and the key to successful ventures, amongst many others.
The conference kicked off with AltCity co-founder Munir Nabti asking the crowd, “What is entrepreneurship?”
The group of about 50 chimed in with various characteristics of an entrepreneur, including problem solving, creating business solutions, being persistent, taking risks, possessing creativity, innovation, and more.
But what about social entrepreneurship, or social ventures? Nabti presented the idea of a business with an impact beyond the bottom-line profit. With a truly integrated social venture, he said, “if you’re able to make more money, you’re able to make more impact.”
Since legal classification is often a point of confusion when explaining “social entrepreneurship”, Nabti discussed a new venture’s decision to register as a non-governmental organization (NGO) or a company, and the various benefits of each. “In many countries in the Middle East, even if you want to start a nonprofit just to make an impact, even if you purely want to be a non-profit, it’s much easier to register as a company; sometimes that’s the only option,” Nabti said. On the flip side, some massive global non-profit organizations operate pretty much like multinational companies, with huge budgets and high-paying salaries.
Regardless, he pointed out, people can apply entrepreneurial principles to an NGO, such as seeking efficiency, and constantly innovating to provide better services to clients. “You can choose to be a profit-maximizing social venture, or you can be an impact-maximizing venture,” Nabti said.
Click to see the Mini-Conference overview..
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Nabti was followed by AltCity Financial Manager Samer Azar’s presentation, “Building Profit and Impact for your Business.” Azar began by discussing the various reasons for a person to start their own business, and included the recent effects of the U.S. economic crisis and Occupy movement on the stability of start-up businesses.“Where do you go now?” Azar asked. “How is business for social change being done?”For one, he gave the example of Sarah’s Bag, a Lebanese company employing women who are ex-prisoners to create their trendy bags and purses. By doing so, the company integrates these women into the workforce and helps reduce the chances they will turn back to a life of crime.Another business, TOMs shoes, donates a pair of shoes to a needy child every time a pair is sold to a consumer. In 2009, TOMs made 4.5 million US dollars and donated hundreds of thousands of shoes to impoverished children.“These businesses, what they’re doing differently is that they have a sense of social purpose,” Azar said. “They focus on an issue, and figure out how to work on it and still make profit.”One such business flourishing in Lebanon is Cedar Environmental, whose founder Ziad Abi Chaker joined Azar on stage to discuss his vision and his business.“We at Cedar Environmental dream of a zero-waste society,” Abi Chaker said at one point in the conversation. With such techniques as an accelerated composting system and a material recovery facility, Cedar Environmental strives for affordable, 100% environmentally-safe waste treatment for all municipalities.Though Cedar Environmental has a specific social and environmental goal, Abi Chaker stressed the importance of creating a good business model.“Profit is what keeps us going, profit is what keeps us forging on,” he said. “If you are a social business, and you don’t answer the question, ‘does it make my economic engine run?’, you have a problem.”Innovation_ideas_and_funding...
Next on the agenda was a discussion of design, innovation, and technology in social business, with Doreen Toutikian of “Desmeem” and Pierre Daher of Marhabalocal.com.Toutikian, who founded MENA Design & Research, presented the ambitious Desmeem Design for Social Change Initiative. The project aspires to incorporate 10 European designers and 30 Arab designers into a collaborative effort with Lebanese NGOs to make creative solutions for social and environmental issues in the region. While still in the works, Desmeem hopes to begin launching its collaborations within the next few months and present the collaborative efforts in an exhibition.Daher discussed the inspiration and birth of his two-month old social venture, marhabalocal.com. The website functions as a network for tourists to get in touch with regular people in Lebanon willing to be guides for the rural and “real” Lebanese locations.“We find many people coming to Lebanon on tourism aren’t having the experience they should be having,” Daher said. “We take them to rural areas, to meet the locals, and their experience is ‘Wow, if we had left Lebanon without going on this kind of trip, we wouldn’t have known it.’”Besides providing tourists with unique experiences, MarhabaLocal intends to provide new job opportunities to local people and contribute to the economic development of their villages. As Daher pointed out, there are 1,648 villages in Lebanon, and a lot to see.“We’re not here as a service provider, what we’re trying to create is a network, a platform, for people to get together,” Daher said in response to a question about how MarhabaLocal can compete with tourism companies. “We’re a complementary offer, not in the same domain. We’re turning rural tourism into a unique experience.”While Daher and Toutikian discussed their unique social ventures, the next pair of presenters talked about the challenges many new ventures face. George Khalaf of Synergos and Yorgui Teyrouz of Donner Sang Compter sat for a Q&A with the audience, in which they explored issues in sustainable business plans and attracting donor money. Khalaf warned against social ventures that are purely dependent on donor money, or that go after donor money rather than a business strategy. Teyrouz took an opportunity to explain one of DSC’s new projects, the ‘Blood Brothers’ bracelet, which identifies its wearer’s blood type.
The conference then shifted to a 15-minute opportunity for ‘demo pitches’ by a number of start-up “social entrepreneurs”. Among them, Diala Najjar, hailing from Los Angeles, presented “Awakening Hidden Talent”, a vision for a Lebanese space for dancers to become professionals. Her hope is that with a professional dancing resource in Lebanon, the art will be cultivated and aspiring dancers won’t leave the country for training and work.Another energetic presentation was given by Norwegian traveler Jorgen Ekroll, who talked about “Walk of Causes,” a web series based on his trip by foot from north to south Lebanon. Ekroll documented different social issues as he went, and plans to use the money raised from the series to contribute to NGOs and charities that deal with these issues.An especially noteworthy pitch came from Ali Chehade, who presented “Dream Matcher,” a social-networking website that matches people with dreams to people who can make those dreams happen. To illustrate his vision, he asked everyone at AltCity to write down their dreams, talents, and abilities. Within the group of about 50, there were 5 dream matches—everything from learning Spanish to becoming a superstar was matched to someone who could help that dream happen.The conference wrapped up with a presentation by a representative of Mowgli, a not-for-profit organization that pairs mentors with aspiring entrepreneurs to help develop new and sustainable businesses. To illustrate the effectiveness of a mentor relationship, the representative paired up everyone in the room in an impromptu conversation about what makes them happy at work and outside of it. The day ended with animated discussion of ideas and ventures between various conference attendees.
The conference at AltCity was part of the nation-wide Global Entrepreneurship Week, which is hosting workshops and events around the country through Saturday, November 26th. [can include link to events schedule here http://gewlebanon.org/page/calendar].
