Bangladesh Social Enterprise Project - Bangladesh Enterprise Institute
Bangladesh Social Enterprise Project - Bangladesh Enterprise Institute
Bangladesh Social Enterprise Project - Bangladesh Enterprise Institute
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<strong>Bangladesh</strong> <strong>Social</strong> <strong>Enterprise</strong> <strong>Project</strong> (BSEP)<br />
1. Introduction<br />
The <strong>Bangladesh</strong> <strong>Enterprise</strong> <strong>Institute</strong> (BEI), an independent non‐profit research centre, in<br />
association with The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) based in Australia and<br />
Libra Advisory Group based in the UK has initiated the <strong>Bangladesh</strong> <strong>Social</strong> <strong>Enterprise</strong> <strong>Project</strong><br />
(BSEP), supported by the British Government’s Department for International Development<br />
(DFID). This project aims to utilize key strengths of the private sector to address some of the<br />
poverty related issues of our country. The project purpose is ‘to identify and build innovative<br />
partnerships within the private sector to undertake projects and programmes which are<br />
commercially viable and directly benefit the poor in alleviating poverty and at the same time,<br />
meet the development objectives of <strong>Bangladesh</strong>.’ Further details and resources are available at<br />
http://www.socialenterpriseportal.org/<br />
This paper aims to record some of the lessons from the project and identify policy implications<br />
and opportunities for the <strong>Bangladesh</strong>i Government, donors and social entrepreneurs.<br />
2. Definitions<br />
There are numerous definitions of social enterprise and the related concepts of social business<br />
and social entrepreneurship. The debate is particularly lively in <strong>Bangladesh</strong>. For Professor<br />
Mohammed Yunus 1 , a key element of social business is that investors receive only their original<br />
investment back, without additional dividend or capital return. Professor Rehman Sobhan 2<br />
focuses on ownership of enterprises, arguing that a significant portion of equity in a social<br />
business should be owned by poor people, in particular employees. BRAC 3 , founded by Sir Fazle<br />
Hasan Abed, operates a hybrid model which combines conventional development, health and<br />
education programmes with social enterprises and more commercial activities such as BRAC<br />
Bank 4 .<br />
1 http://www.muhammadyunus.org/<strong>Social</strong>‐Business/<br />
2 http://www.cpd‐bangladesh.org/about/rs.html<br />
3 http://www.brac.net/<br />
4 http://www.bracbank.com/<br />
BSEP: Policy Brief<br />
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