Like all other businesses, social entrepreneurship too runs on making profit and incurring revenues. Therefore the biggest challenge facing a social entrepreneur is how to channelise an essentially capitalistic endeavour onto an area that inherently deploys socialistic principles at its service.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer at SMPLCT Lab, Cynthia Hellen, a Peruvian-American, entrepreneur, writer, producer, director, and speaker, talked about the challenges and achievements this particular model of business faces. She spoke at the American Centre, Kolkata at a media roundtable.
Located in New York, SMPLCT Lab has a mission to create cross cultural collaboration between sectors – artists, designers, technologists, scholars, researchers, policy-makers, and citizens worldwide – and to design simple solutions for those living on less than $2 a day; and to better educate society on sustainable living.
SMPLCT Lab believes that with technology jobs can be created, society educated and our natural resources protected while living sustainably. The same concept inspired her to launch Socentech, a community for social entrepreneurship and technology in emerging markets.
Apart from the USA, Cynthia has also worked in European countries like Denmark, Portugal and also developing parts of the world like Peru, West Africa and is presently in India to assess the market here.
While the challenges faced by her in a developed first world economy are completely different from the ones she has to face in lesser economically flourishing ones, there also remains the question of balancing business and the social cause together. Having witnessed poverty from close quarters during her childhood, Cynthia believes education and awareness can go a long way in facilitating business that deals with the welfare of people.
In countries like India, that are developing, she believes human resource is at its best. Technology, she believes, used in different ways according to the needs of each particular country and the market it opens up, can go a long way in creating the required social and environmental impact.
