First of all, thank you very much for joining us here at SPF World Views. I’m very excited to talk with you today.
Professor Carlo: Of course. It's my pleasure.
Before we get started, I just wanted to get you to give us a brief self-introduction. Tell us who you are and what you do.
Professor Carlo: I'm Professor Carlo Sagun. I'm currently the president and CEO of Bayan Family of Foundations.
So it's really an ecosystem of a couple of foundations that really aim to uplift social enterprises and advance the social impact of the organizations that we partner with. We're based in the Philippines. So we have the Bayan Innovation Group. That's really our research and consultancy arm. Bayan Academy, which is really into education and training, Bayan Edge, which is into impact investing, Bayan Search, which is into community hand-holding, and last but not the least would be the umbrella organization, which is the Bayan Family of Foundations.
So that's my main hat during most days, but I'm also the academic director of the only graduate program in social entrepreneurship in the Philippines. So that's something that is based in Ateneo de Manila University's Graduate School of Business. It's the master in entrepreneurship for social enterprise development.
And I'd like to mention that I'm a founding board trustee of the Society for the Advancement of Professional Social Entrepreneurship, as well.
You've brought up our key word for our discussion today, so I wanted to start with a bit of a fundamental question: how would you define a social enterprise?
Professor Carlo: Okay. Well, for us to get into the to the definition of social enterprise, I think it would be good for us to get into a couple of things. And I think this is where it gets murky for a lot of stakeholders.
There's social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, and the social entrepreneur. Most of the time, these subject matters are loosely interchanged by different stakeholders, and I think it's important to know the differences.
But before we get into those differences, I think it's important to note as well that the word social is just a modifier of entrepreneurship, enterprise, and entrepreneur, right? So whatever social entrepreneurship is, it's supposed to be directly linked to entrepreneurship. Whatever social enterprise is, it's supposed to be that enterprise anchor as well. And so on and so forth.
When we talk about entrepreneurship, it's really a process of adding value to a particular market. Most people, they equate entrepreneurship to business. In our school of thought, we'd like to say that it's not the case. Business per se is investing a particular currency, whatever it is, and through the operations of that business, turning that initial investment into more money, into more currency.
Entrepreneurship, it's really adding value to any particular situation of dissatisfaction in whatever aspect of society. So it's really adding value in that regard.
When we talk about social entrepreneurship, now we're adding value to any social dissatisfaction. And so when we talk about social dissatisfaction that gets into the entire universe of social issues, whether it be about lack of education, lack of livelihood, addressing climate change, addressing conflict and war, and so on and so forth, those are under the gamut of social issues that we can add value for through the process of social entrepreneurship.
When we talk about social entrepreneurship, it's really about starting from point A, where there is a general social dissatisfaction whatever social issue that may be, and the objective of that process is really to translate that situation of dissatisfaction into a better state, a situation of satisfaction.
So, for example, lack of livelihood. If the baseline or the starting situation, the dissatisfied state, is that the livelihood situation of a particular community is just, for example, I'm going to talk in Philippine terms, 5,700 pesos per month. So that's just $100 per month, right? And let's say the poverty incidence, or the poverty situation in that particular locality, a particular household would have to earn around 8,000 pesos for them to be considered out of poverty.
If that's the objective, that's the situation of satisfaction, then the process of social entrepreneurship should endeavor to increase their livelihood by around roughly 2,300 pesos for them to at least get to that poverty rate. And of course, if you want to get them out of poverty, get them to earn income beyond that level of the income that would otherwise categorize them under the impoverished sector, that would be the objective of livelihood endeavors. For example, making communities operate a social enterprise for handicrafts to increase their livelihood.
So that was social entrepreneurship as a process, getting from point A to point B as the objective. You won't get from point A to point B without infusing an innovation, which is what entrepreneurship is all about.
That's where the social entrepreneur comes in. The social entrepreneur is actually the person or in some cases the organization that actually infuses the innovation that would get the situation from point A to point B.
So now we get into the social enterprise, which now leads me to directly answer your question. The social enterprise is actually one of the many means by which we can sustain the solution infused or introduced by the person or the organization who served as the social entrepreneur.
When we talk about a social enterprise, it's really a business that has the addressing of the social mission as the core of that particular business. At the end of the day, it's an enterprise. It's a market driven model by which a product or a service is actually sold to the market and that product or service is actually the solution to that social issue.
In layman's terms, probably we can categorize social enterprises as a heart with a business rather than a business with the heart because when you're a heart with a business, you put the social mission forward. You put addressing the social issue forward over profit making, over the business.
From a technical standpoint, there are three elements to it. One is that it should be a business because it's an enterprise. Number two, given the modifier, the word social, the enterprise is supposed to be going for a social mission. And then there's this third, crucial element in social enterprises all over the world, which is the majority of the benefits of the social enterprise must be accruing to the social mission.
That's why you have more advanced jurisdictions such as South Korea, the U.K. and so on and so forth that would have social enterprise laws that would earmark X percent of their profits for their social mission.
I was hoping to hear about the National Social Enterprise Roadmap, which I think forms a fundamental part of the collaborative efforts that have gone on between the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the BFF Group. So, the Bayan Innovation Group, which to my understanding acts as the research arm within this group of foundations, produced this National Social Enterprise Roadmap in November 2021. Can you describe what exactly is laid out in this roadmap and what was the context behind its creation?
Professor Carlo: First of all, I'd like to give credit where credit is due. Bayan Innovation Group was the orchestrator of the research and strategic planning that was done that ultimately resulted into that roadmap. But it was ultimately the collective efforts of the entire sector of social enterprises in the Philippines. So, I think we would not have arrived at that roadmap if all the inputs of these sector leaders weren't provided.
So, the main question that we had in mind was why isn’t anyone orchestrating a nationwide effort to develop social enterprises? When we had that question, we undertook that research in aid of strategic planning.
It's not a lack of resources. It's not a lack of stakeholders who want to get into social enterprise development. But it's really a mixed understanding on what social enterprises ought to be.
And I think that's the main vision of this plan, of this nationwide plan, to make people arrive at a common understanding of what social enterprises are. Because if we do have that common understanding, then now all this affluence of resources, all these efforts can be channeled towards one unified outcome.
And, I think there are three levels to how this, unified outcome is actually divided. The first one is with regard to the general Filipino public. Of course, awareness of social enterprises is an end result. With regard to interveners or enablers in the sector, hopefully, they buy in into this plan and they actually contribute their programs. For the development of social enterprises. And last but not the least would be the social enterprises themselves. It wouldn’t be a social enterprise development plan if the social enterprises are not considered as the central, part of that plan.
So, essentially, the outcome for social enterprises is number one, for them to increase in asset size, so that's a business indicator actually; for them to actually deliver their social mission; and for us to be able to quantify their collective contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. So in sum, that's what the roadmap is all about.
In terms of implementation, we actually put together, governance system for this entire plan because we understand that a single or two organizations simply cannot deliver the magnitude of work that has to be done.
So this governance system is actually composed of a couple of sectors or subsectors in relation to the wider social enterprise sector. We have the academe sector. We have the NGO sector. We have the cooperatives sector. We have the, MSMEs or the micro small medium enterprise sector, which actually includes people's associations as well. And corporations, which is actually, to our minds, would have vast resources that can be utilized in aid of social enterprise development. So, it's really about, including or actually considering social enterprises in their value chains, in their supply chains.
And one might ask, where are the public agencies, where is the government? When we did the strategic planning for various reasons, we said that as a strategic direction, we're going to make this a sector-led initiative. So, in that regard, technically speaking, the government is not part of the governance system. It's really led by actual social entrepreneurs or by enablers of social enterprises in the country. But government agencies are actually considered as collaborators, in as far as they're ready to do so.
In the Philippine context, if you want to deal with government from the top down, from the central office all the way to the regional and provincial offices, it might take you ten years just to be able to orchestrate them in that manner.
But to the extent that we can identify champions in government in this particular area, in that particular sector, by all means let's work together. But of course, we realize that for us to deliver the intended magnitude of outcomes that we have set out to do, government has to be part of the equation.
So that's why through the help of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, champion local government units were actually aided or provided with technical assistance such that they can have their own localized plans to contribute to this nationwide endeavor.
Talking about the collaboration that's happened with the Social Innovation Program at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, one of the major efforts has been taking this roadmap and bringing it to three different pilot areas in the Philippines, and as you say, working with local government and developing this kind of approach on a local level. Can you talk a bit about exactly what that entails, what was done in collaboration with the foundation?
Professor Carlo: When we talk about the Philippine SE Roadmap, its perspective is really a nationwide development of social enterprises. So, when we get to a particular locality, that nationwide framing might not be as relevant given their particular local context.
So, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in the past year actually provided funding assistance for us to be able to come up with the localized version of this nationwide plan. So, we purposely chose a city pilot in Quezon City, a municipal pilot in the municipality of Odiongan in the province of Romblon, and a regional pilot in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
Why did we purposely choose those three LGUs (local government units)? Number one, Quezon City is aiming to be the social enterprise capital of the Philippines. It has good political support from its mayor, Mayor Joy Belmonte, so it can serve as a model city that can be replicated among all cities in the Philippines, and there are hundreds of cities.
The municipal pilot is Odiongan. We came across, to our minds, one of the most ideal politicians in the country in Mayor Trina Firmalo-Fabic. That's going to serve as a municipal model, and we have more than 1,400 municipalities in the country. So just imagine if we do it right in Odiongan, it can be replicated in the rest of the municipalities.
And BARMM is one of our 17 regions. We did the localized regional plan for BARMM and, hopefully, the way we orchestrated it in BARMM can serve as a model that the other 16 regions can follow moving forward.
So again, those are just three government agency champions, local government unit champions, but the intention is to really replicate it to as much local government units as possible moving forward.
What exactly was done in these three different regions? What kind of projects were implemented in order to support this localizing of the road map in these three different contexts?
Professor Carlo: Essentially it's a planning endeavor, so it's a strategic planning endeavor because for us to be able to come up with a policy that would enable these local government units to institutionalize the program and implement it continuously, there has to be a basis for that policy, a localized basis at that.
And, we had to do a localized research. So we had to really assess all the variables that would actually be relevant for social enterprise development in that particular locality. And at the same time, we had to diagnose the organization of those particular local government units. How have they performed historically in developing social enterprises? What kind of people competencies do they actually have? What kind of processes do they actually have in place? What's their potential in terms of leadership, in terms of networks and alliances, and so on and so forth?
The research inputs actually provided us with peculiar strategies with all three, LGUs. So, for example in BARMM, it was really about using social enterprises to reintegrate the former combatants because BARMM is actually a conflict affected area, a historically affected area. So we will be focusing on developing the former rebel camps, the communities around the former rebel camps through social entrepreneurship.
For Odiongan, it's really about pushing for priority industries that are specific to Odiongan. Given that it's a municipality that's right at the heart of the bottom-most area of Luzon, one of the three major islands of the Philippines, it would have peculiar priority industries, right.
And with Quezon City, given that it's right at the heart of the nation's capital, it would have all the variables in place for effectively developing social enterprises. It would have all the schools, it would have industries there, and so on and so forth, that would not otherwise be present in BARMM or in Odiongan. So, given that research, Quezon City is really ripe for being nurtured as the social enterprise capital of the country.
I'm hoping to hear more about your broader vision. We've talked about a lot of these different programs that have been undertaken, the specific roadmap itself. If you had to just sum up your overall vision for where you would like to see this roadmap being implemented in the future, the knowledge gained from these three pilot areas where you would like to see that implemented in the future. How do you see all of those pieces coming together and moving forward?
Professor Carlo: We're in the process of creating this ASEAN-wide roadmap of actually contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. And it just so happened that when we had shared what we have been doing in the Philippines in as far as the Philippines SE Roadmap is concerned, different regional actors were, well, to my surprise, were actually amazed at how we've orchestrated such a nationwide program. So it's actually being used as a means to learn how an ASEAN-wide endeavor to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals can be done.
So to the extent that what we're doing in the Philippines can be replicated in other countries, that's something that the different regional stakeholders are now talking about. So hopefully that can also serve as an invitation for development stakeholders to get involved in the wider ASEAN development space.
The ideal situation is that we're all working together towards that unified goal and all of us are working together towards the Sustainable Development Goals and so on and so forth.
But, for us to be able to do that, and this might be ironic because we're for uplifting social enterprises, the plan is for developing social enterprises, but the ideal situation is that we don't even have to talk about it as social enterprises. Businesses would have to be socially oriented. And I think that level of awareness, can be attained not just through our intervention. That has to be an entire paradigm shift of how societies are actually being moved by different stakeholders.
It's not just about social enterprises anymore. It's about the private sector. It's about the academic institutions actually shifting how their programs are designed so that their graduates can contribute more and more to social development.
And I think when we talk about that, social enterprise development now becomes a wider social and solidarity economy endeavor. It becomes a whole of society approach towards contributing to the envisioned development outcomes.
Outro:
That was our conversation with Prof. Carlo Sagun, President and CEO of Bayan Family of Foundations. Thanks for joining us for this episode of SPF World Views. We’ll see you next time.
