'Devote part of dev aid to fund social business'
Prof Muhammad Yunus (R) with Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau who visited him at his hotel during his visit to Canada. Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus has advocated to exclusively devote part of development aid to financing social business initiatives. He made the call during his meeting with the Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau who visited him at his hotel on Friday. They discussed development strategies including the role of social business.
During the hour-long meeting, Prof Yunus suggested that some part of development aid could be exclusively devoted to funding social business initiatives, such as sustainable enterprises that address social needs while unleashing the creative energies of the communities.
They talked in particular about Yunus Social Business initiatives in Haiti and Africa where funds have been created to support social businesses in those countries with very good results. They also discussed developing entrepreneurship programmes for aboriginal communities in Canada following the Nobin Udyokta programme in Bangladesh to engage the unemployed youth in those communities to create entreprises that bring income for themselves while also generating employment for others.
Morneau thanked Prof Yunus for the meeting and also talked about prospects of big Canadian companies operating in poor countries to create social businesses to help overcome their problems.
Earlier in Ottawa Prof Yunus addressed the One Young World Summit audience of 1,300 young people on how they can change the world by challenging the conventional wisdoms that getting a good job is the purpose of life. He said human beings are entrepreneurs and by creating their own enterprises they discover themselves and create new centres of sharing the wealth, rather than working for companies that merely make those who are rich richer.
He talked about his own vision of a world with three zeroes - zero poverty zero unemployment and zero carbon emissions - and how the power of youth would be an important force for achieving those goals together with the power of social business and technology.
Prof Yunus was joined on stage by 10 members of youth delegation from Bangladesh who were selected through a competitive process by Yunus Centre to attend the One Young World Summit as part of his delegation, according to the Yunus Centre. -bz
Source Link: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2016/10/02/47971/Devote-part-of-dev-aid-to-fund-social-business
Source: Financial Express Bangladesh
Updated Date: 13th March, 2017