In this article, it talks about how Singaporeans are unaware of Social Enterprises and in which direction should SEs head to. A survey was conducted by the Social Enterprise (SE) Association, and the results? Only 13 percent of the 2,000 respondents surveyed knew what social enterprises are. Of those who knew confused social enterprises with non-profits and voluntary welfare organisations, and even statutory boards.
However, these results did not came as a surprise to Isaiah Chng, director of Proage, a social enterprise that focuses on creating avenues and opportunities for people to age well and Tommy Tng, general manager, sales and operations for Ability Enterprise, who also runs an employment programme under the charity, Society for the Physically Disabled (SPD) that offers services including designing and making greeting cards, bookbinding and making corporate gifts.
However, all hopes are not lost as the survey also found out that of those people who bought stuffs from social enterprises, 91% were satisfied with the products and one of the reasons of buying them from social enterprises is the social cause that the social enterprise stand for.
Personally, I feel that the support from the people towards social enterprises are strong as one of the reasons for purchasing products is due to the social cause. This also shows that people are passionate on helping the marginalized people in the society. With that said, the main problem is how are we able to raise more awareness on social enterprises? Rome was not built overnight, thus I believe that through bit by bit advertising, campaigns and etc, social enterprises are definitely able to catch the attention of Singaporeans.
Will a day come whereby social enterprises are now the "norms" for the society where everyone fully understands the social cause of the different social enterprises and aim towards a common goal? For all I know, if no one starts the initiative, this dream might be as good as gone.
Read the full article here : http://www.salt.org.sg/470/low-perception-of-social-enterprises/
Reference :
Yap, E. (2011, September 2). Low perception of social enterprises. Retrieved from https://www.salt.org.sg/470/low-perception-of-social-enterprises/
I'm agreeing with you that people actually do have the support for social causes, and they do actually unknowingly support social enterprises. But the issue is that they do not know what are social enterprises.
ReplyDeleteBeing in BZSE for 3 years, I'm sure many of us know that there are very few people who actually know the term social enterprise in Singapore, an example being telling your friend which course you're studying in.
Besides just that and a hunch that most people do not know what a social enterprise is, as an intern in SEAssociation, this point has been reconfirmed.
Through events that I've been through with SEAssociation, I've heard multiple times that people's knowledge of social enterprises is low. So the question now is how do we spread this message? Many methods might or might not work, but like in the case of UK, social enterprises are very common and much more people know about them.
Besides depending on the government and organizations such as SEAssociation, I believe that if more people are willing to take the step to set up their own social enterprises, young or old, this message would quickly spread.