What is Social Enterprise?

A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a for-profit or non-profit, and may take the form of a co-operative, mutual organization, a disregarded entity, a social business, or a charity organization

Many commercial enterprises would consider themselves to have social objectives, but commitment to these objectives is motivated by the perception that such commitment will ultimately make the enterprise more financially valuable. Social enterprises differ in that, inversely, they do not aim to offer any benefit to their investors, except where they believe that doing so will ultimately further their capacity to realize their social and environmental goals.

The term has a mixed and contested heritage due to its philanthropic roots in the US, and cooperative roots in the UK, EU and Asia. In the US, the term is associated with 'doing charity by doing trade', rather than 'doing charity while doing trade'. In other countries, there is a much stronger emphasis on community organizing, democratic control of capital and mutual principles, rather than philanthropy. In recent years, there has been a rise in the concept of social purpose businesses which pursue social responsibility directly, or raise funds for charitable projects.

Many entrepreneurs, whilst running a profit focused enterprise that they own, will make charitable gestures through the enterprise, expecting to make a loss in the process. However, social enterprises are differentiated through transparent evidence that their social aims are primary, and that profits are secondary.

Social Enterprise in the Philippines

Gawad Kalinga (GK), which means to "give care" in Filipino, is officially known as the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, a Philippine-based poverty alleviation and nation-building movement.

The foundation for Gawad Kalinga was laid on December 26, 1995, when lay Catholic community Couples for Christ held a Youth Camp for gang members and juvenile delinquents in Bagong Silang, Caloocan City, then the largest slum area in the Philippines. The program was organized by CFC – Youth for Christ.
In 1999, the first GK house was built for the Adduru family, also from Bagong Silang.[2] The name "Gawad Kalinga", which translates in the Filipino language either as "to give care" or "to award care," was coined in 2000.
The first GK Expo was launched on October 4, 2003, in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City. During this gathering, GK launched a campaign called the GK777 campaign to build 700,000 homes in 7,000 communities for 7 years.
On February 25, 2006, GK launched the Isang Milyong Bayani ("One Million Heroes", also known as GK1MB) program, where volunteers from various nations would donate 4 hours of work per month to assist in GK communities. The program includes an annual event called the GK1MB Bayani Challenge, a one-week national immersion/build activity, where volunteers within the program come together to build homes in a GK community for a week.[3] The Bayani Challenge has been held in Aurora Province and Quezon Province (2006); Albay, Camarines Sur, Sorsogon, Marinduque, and Samar (2007);[4] Bukidnon and Lanao del Sur (2008);[5] and Sulu and Zamboanga City (2009).[6][7][8]
The first Gawad Kalinga Global Summit was held in Boston, Massachusetts, last June 12–14, 2009. During the event, GK launched a 21-year timeline to end poverty for 5 million families by providing land for the landless, homes for the homeless and food for the hungry.
Development Model
The first phase of the GK journey sought to achieve Social Justice by raising 700,000 homes and start–up 7,000 communities by the end of 2010. The goal of the campaign called GK 777 is to "un-squat” the poorest of the poor, heal their woundedness, regain their trust, build their confidence, make them think and act as a community and to share the joy of a country rising from poverty.
GK is now moving into the next 7 years (from 2011 to 2018) towards the stewardship phase called Social Artistry: strengthening governance; developing community-based programs for health, education, environment, and productivity; building a village culture that honors Filipino values and heritage. The goal is to empower the powerless for self-governance, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency.
The final phase in the last 7 years from 2018 to 2024 is envisioned as a time of Social Progress. This phase seeks to achieve scale and sustainability by developing the grassroots economy and expanding the reach and influence of GK to 5 million families with support from key sectors of society in the Philippines and partners abroad. GK seeks to relieve poverty by providing an environment in which Filipinos may work and be productive.
The 21-year journey of Gawad Kalinga represents one generation of Filipinos who will journey from poverty to prosperity, from neglect to respect, from shame to honor, from third-world to first-world, from second-class to first-class citizen of the world. The term first-world simply refers to greater opportunities, higher standards, and better quality of life available to more of its citizens.
With a development road map in the Philippines, GK seeks to create successful development templates that can be replicated in other developing countries, helping to create a world free from poverty
Development Programs
Child and Youth Development: The GK CYD program aims to develop the skills and talents of the children and youth in the GK communities by inculcating values that bring out their full potential. SIBOL, which means “to grow,” provides value-based education to pre-school children, aged 3 to 6 years old. SAGIP, which means “to save a life”, is a support program for children aged 7 to 13 years old, which consists of free academic tutorials, sports and creative workshops and values formation classes. SIGA, which means “to light”, empowers teens to become productive citizens through sports, creative activities and mentoring sessions.
Community Building: The GK Community Building program seeks to empower poor communities to become self-reliant and sustainable by building up its people, preparing their leaders and residents to eventually care for their own communities while instilling in them the heart and capacity to help other poor communities.
Green Kalinga: The GK Environment program aims to create "green" model communities through its various programs to protect the environment. Love and care for the environment are inculcated among community members through seminars while creating environment- friendly projects like solid waste management and partnership with environment advocacy groups and government agencies. "Save the poor, save the environment."
Bayan-Anihan: The GK Food Sufficiency program is committed to empower the hungry and to eradicate hunger. It is envisioned that each family in a community is empowered to produce their own food to augment their needs.
GK Kalusugan: The GK Health program believes that every Filipino has the right to good health, and ensures that community health care services are delivered to those that need it the most. Volunteer doctors, nurses and medical practitioners here and abroad contribute to ensure that health profiles of GK residents are maintained, connect them to local health care centers and hospitals, and train Health Care Volunteers from among the residents who can help address the community’s own day-to-day health needs.
Community Infrastructure: The GK Community Infrastructure Program (CIP) aims to build brightly painted homes in sustainable communities for the poorest of the poor. Homes and other communal facilities (multiple purpose centers, school buildings, clinics, etc.) are built through a combination of skilled paid labor and sweat equity of the GK residents themselves.
Center for Social Innovation: CSI (Center for Social Innovation) is a business ecosystem developer that aims to build a culture of social entrepreneurship. Business ecosystems are spaces that are forgiving enough for social entrepreneurs to make mistakes while testing prototypes and new business models; AND spaces that are also demanding enough for them to build global Filipino brands that have real social and environmental impact.
GK Enchanted Farm

Named after the place of its origin, Bulacan’s Barangay Encanto—which connotes images of the supernatural and magical in Filipino—the Enchanted Farm is the canvas for Gawad Kalinga’s second phase of the 2024 road map to end poverty in the Philippines. Once idle and unproductive, the area is being transformed into a landscape of vast potential that will sustain communities for generations to come. The first of 24 CSI sites around the Philippines, The Enchanted Farm in Bulacan follows a template that fuses three different concepts.

The first concept is a Village University for sustainable community development where classrooms are connected to communities. An ideal site for any university student, the Enchanted Farm will expose students on how to start social enterprises and communities from the ground-up attracting students from all sorts of disciplines. Young children will come to the farm to learn and appreciate the growth of plant and animal life through explorer parties and camps. Residents of the GK village will be exposed to social entrepreneurship that can open a world of opportunities locally and globally.

The second component of The Enchanted Farm is a Silicon Valley for social entrepreneurship where young entrepreneurs are provided a supportive business ecosystem and an enabling environment to help them launch Filipino brands. Fifty of the most innovative social enterprises in the Philippines will not only be conveniently located on the Enchanted Farm to showcase their brands, but will also share in the resources of the farm and facilities.

The third component is a Disneyland for social tourism in which visitors from other parts of the Philippines and abroad can get a first-hand experience of the Gawad Kalinga community, and gain insight to the social problems that face millions of Filipinos. Through the magical stories of the Enchanted Farm, enchanting not only through stories of fairy tales of duwendes (Filipino for elf) but also real life experiences, tourists can see how dreams can become a reality in a nation where its people were once provoked to find solutions and greener pastures elsewhere.

Setting the tone for innovation and possibility in the Philippines, The Enchanted Farm is a development that will forever change the future of a nation consistently promised a better tomorrow but perpetually waiting for that day to come. A new dawn has arrived and it will continue to take shape in Barangay Encanto, at The Enchanted Farm.

The Enchanted Farm (Almost a Fairy Tale)

Rising gradually on 14 hectares of verdant, undulating terrain is a farm, home, village and “university” rolled into one, where people’s dreams and ideas are put to the test, nurtured and turned into reality.
Gawad Kalinga’s (GK) Enchanted Farm in Barangay (village) Encanto in Angat, Bulacan is, as its name and location suggest, a special place like no other. Beholding it even in its unfinished stage could spark an OMG (oh my God) moment.
The farm is rapidly transforming the Angat landscape by being a sustainable community and a place of learning, creating and, most of all, sharing. It is exactly what it’s more daunting name connotes: the Center for Social Innovation (CSI), a place for daring and creativity. Living the CSI way is for the big of heart, not the faint-hearted.
When GK quietly began in 2000 “by building communities to end poverty,” little did its founder and driving force Antonio Meloto know how far he and his fellow dreamers from Couples for Christ (CFC) would go. GK began as a ministry for the poor of CFC. The story of how GK grew from its small beginnings is told in the book “The Builder of Dreams” by Meloto, a 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Community Leadership and the Inquirer’s Filipino of the Year for 2005.
In May this year, Meloto received the Nikkei Asia Award for Regional Growth. Just recently, he was invited to the World Economic Forum in Jakarta. Speaking to thinkers, policy makers and generators of global wealth, Meloto described how GK is “creating a hybrid of philanthropy and social business to achieve impact, scale and sustainability.”

Meloto loves to say, “Mangangarap ka rin lang, bakit ka pa magtitipid (If you must dream, why set limits)?”
After GK777 (target: 700,000 homes for the poorest in 7,000 communities in seven years) was launched in 2003, GK grew by leaps and bounds and has been moving inexorably closer and faster to its goal. There are now more than 1,700 GK communities in the Philippines plus several in three Asian countries.
GK777 is now segueing into GK2024, “a 21-year vision which provides the roadmap towards a First World Philippines” and “ending the poverty of 5 million by 2024.” This emerging Asian model for development was unveiled globally at the 2009 GK Global Summit in Boston that gathered GK supporters from all over the world.

CSI/Enchanted Farm is GK’s second phase,” Meloto enthuses. He shows a thick ring-bound physical plan of the farm, done to the minutest detail – and for free –by a team from the National University of Singapore. Several of the structures in the plan are finished, the rest are in various stages of completion. First to be finished is the colorful row of 40 homes now occupied by 40 families. In front is the Cory Garden that honors the memory of the late President Corazon Aquino, who launched GK777.
The GK families in the farm couldn’t ask for more. Most of the parents work inside the farm and so they need not spend time, energy and money for commuting. The children attend a public school nearby. The residents participate in building a sustainable community through their work and their lives. Indeed, this is paradise compared to the city slums they had left behind.
When SIM visited, there were about a dozen young volunteers doing chores and integrating themselves in the farm. They came from different countries and the Philippines. Many are new graduates, others have had fruitful, high-paying careers that they gave up to work with GK.
There is Clarisse Simmoneau, 22, a designer from France, who was busy designing native crafts. Frank Chiu, a Filipino, left the corporate world and now oversees CSI operations. Billy Santos, 23, was teaching physics in Ateneo until GK beckoned. Cherri Atilano, an agriculture graduate and one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines in 2007, had stunned Fulbright officials when she postponed her US scholarship to work with GK. Filipino-Australian Jai Aguilar, 22, a business management graduate of La Salle University, manages GK’s infrastructure and site development and is into community organizing. Chilka Alvarez put lawyering on hold to go into cheesemaking (fromage de chevre or goat cheese) that would give livelihood to the poor. “Many of the crimes committed are driven by poverty,” she reminds the listener.
A number of foreign volunteers learned about GK via the Internet. Others knew about GK’s well-publicized track record. “Last year, we had 1,000 students from Singapore, then we had 400 interns from France,” Meloto says. “We try to give interns a patriotic education.”
[pic]
“Say Gawad!” Foreign and Filipino volunteers with GK driving force Antonio Meloto (standing in white shirt, center): “We must raise their patriotic quotient”
“Filipinos are said to be high in IQ and EQ, but low in SQ and PQ,” he says, referring to intelligence quotient, emotional quotient, social quotient and patriotic quotient, respectively.
The Enchanted Farm in Bulacan is the first of 24 CSI sites being set up all over the country to complement the impact of thriving GK communities. Donated by a generous man named Jun Valbuena, the 14 hectares in Bulacan used to be idle, unproductive land.
But, as the saying goes, “if you build it, they will come.” Manpower and machines from Shell, Hyundai, Mang Inasal and units from the Armed Forces of the Philippines are among those breaking ground, building structures and paving roads in the farm. Workers come from GK communities in Bulacan. In the meantime, budding social entrepreneurs are creating and testing their products and services that will soon be offered in the farm and outside markets.
President Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino III is expected to visit the place anytime soon. For sure, he won’t be disappointed.
Already, Meloto explains, the CSI template has fused three different concepts.
First, it is a “village university for sustainable community development” where classrooms are connected to communities. Here students learn how to start social enterprises. Children living in the GK Village experience the natural environment, while their elders are slowly exposed to social entrepreneurship that would soon open doors for them.
The second component is a “Silicon Valley for social entrepreneurship,” where young entrepreneurs are provided an enabling environment to help them launch Filipino brands. Fifty of the most innovative social enterprises in the Philippines will be conveniently located at the Enchanted Farm to showcase their brands. They will also share in the farm facilities and resources.
The third component is a “Disneyland for social tourism,” in which Filipino and foreign visitors can have a first-hand experience of the Gawad Kalinga community, and gain insight into the social problems that face millions of Filipinos.
All these need infrastructure. A multipurpose hall for big gatherings is now in place. A bamboo “palace” is slowly taking shape. The restaurant/cafe without walls is almost finished. There is a building for the production of native crafts, sewing and other income-generating activities. An industrial kitchen for food products is almost ready.
Now when everything has been completed, don’t forget to check out the spa, chapel, swimming pool, bed-and-breakfast place, facilities for retreats and seminars. Who says one can’t have fun in a place like this?
And don’t forget another operative word: sustainability.
Almost all the ingredients for the food products are grown organically in the farm. Fast becoming a favorite drink is Enchantea, made from lemon grass. Two young social entrepreneurs are now producing salted duck eggs dyed turmeric yellow (GK’s color of hope) instead of the common red. It’s also about creating brands. So it’s Golden Eggs for the salted eggs, Blue Bamboo for the furniture and crafts and TheoPhilo for the artisan chocolates from homegrown cacao. Expect more GK brands to emerge.
In GK farms in the provinces (and soon, in the Enchanted Farm) are produced many of the herbal ingredients for Human Nature, the health-and-beauty product line that is fast capturing the market because of its organic, non-chemical components sourced from hard-working GK communities determined to cross the so-called poverty line. Profits go to GK projects.
The Enchanted Farm/CSI is meant to be a showcase along the GK roadmap to 2024. If 2003 to 2010 was focused on social justice that went beyond charity, 2011 to 2017 is the “designer phase” called “social artistry, when we invite greater expertise, science and technology to grow our holistic model for development,” says Meloto who, true to form, continues to dream big.
2018 to 2024, he says, is the era of social progress. GK envisions a new standard of living to take a permanent foothold in the life of a nation. This, according to GK, “will only be achieved by working on scale and sustainability of what have been established earlier – the spirit, the science and the structure. By this time, a new generation of empowered, productive citizens would have emerged, who lived through an exciting time of change – moving from poverty to prosperity, from shame to honor, from third-world to first-world and from second-class to first-class citizen of the world.”
And the Enchanted Farm? It promises to remain enchanting for generations to come. Come and experience the life.