Our friend Felipe provides us with some news from Colombia - the Social Business Days"s next station:

GCL starts operations in Manizales, Caldas in collaboration with the Poverty Reduction Department of the Government of Caldas with five employees of GCL.

"...this will be a very interesting experiment, not only for Caldas, for all of us, everywhere." (Prof. Yunus)

Caldas is a province of the Paisa region in Colombia with beautiful landscapes and one of the best coffees in Colombia. It belongs to the area named "Triangle of Coffee" and has almost 1 million inhabitants. Unfortunately, the region has suffered an economical depression due to the collapse of the coffee market in the area; 62% of its population lives on less than $USD 2 per day.
“One of the most challenging -and potentially exciting- areas for social business will be working to revitalize entire economies that are struggling under the burdens of poverty. The potential exists to bring together resources from many players-government agencies, NGOs, private companies, and individual citizens-to create powerful poverty-alleviating programs centered on the propulsive force of social business." (Prof. Yunus, Building Social Business, 2010)

As Prof. Yunus says in his latest book, the Caldas project is a challenge due to its interaction with many players from different backgrounds, such as the government. Building social business along with government becomes quite challenging from the legal perspective. The social business structure has to deal with the many laws of the public sector; creativity is needed to build up the structure to set up social businesses.

However, the main stakeholder of the social business impact is the community. When setting up social business projects, it´s key to involve the main actors of the society, such as universities, small entrepreneurs, etc. The social business know-how has to become part of the community. The next generation of social business projects will be created by university students, young local entrepreneurs, and anybody passionate about social business. In Colombia, the GCL team is giving lectures at the local universities, companies and NGOs to spread the social business ideas and inspire young students to be part of this challenging project and give a new meaning to their education.

Microfinance is also a key component of the Caldas Project. Given the 62% of the population living on less than $USD 2, microcredits are a useful tool to give a chance to the poor of the poor to generate an income-generating activity and become an active actor of society.

The challenge of the Caldas project is its Holistic Approach to the region. Along with social business, microfinance will support the creation of entrepreneurial activities that could be part of the social business projects´ value chain. For example, the leading economical activity in Caldas is agriculture, mainly coffee cultivation. A potential social business could be the creation of a coffee store chain. The special coffee offered in these shops would be bought from particular farmers (microcredit borrowers, for example) and the employees of the coffee shops could be young unemployed students. We would create employment for young people and a market for particular poor farmers.

Until the end of the year, we want to:

// Start the Microfinance for the Poorest in Caldas
// Start lending process
// Support jobs generating businesses
// Connect needs with ideas and form social businesses in Education, Agriculture, Art and Culture, Energy, etc.
// Build initiative along GCL activities with build up of GCL center in Colombia

// Interact
// Incubate
// Create

--> Are you interested in supporting Felipe in Caldas? What do you think about this project - will Social Business fly in Colombia?