Social Business Week in Singapore

It has been an amazing week in Singapore! BagoSphere took part in the 2nd Social Business Week (20th - 24th Febuary 2011) organized by Grameen Creative Labs at the National University of Singapore (GCL@NUS).

The first event of the week was the Social Business Boot Camp. It started off an intimate look into the world of social business with presentations from Hans Reitz, Co-founder of GCL, Sourabh Sharma from Milaap and Jack Sim from the World Toliet Organization. The Boot Camp quickly delved into the intricacies of creating a business model using the well known Business Model Canvas which was co-created by Alexander Osterwalder. Prof Wong Poh Kam, who is the Director of the GCL@NUS facilitated the discussions. We were lucky to have Dion Lee, a lecturer in Enterprise Development  from ITE East and Evelyn Lim, who was our intern in December to participate with us in the boot camp.

The highlight of the boot camp was a 2 minute pitching session in front of a panel which consists of the founders of Grameen Creative Labs, Hans and Prof. Mohammed Yunus himself, Durreen Shahnaz, Founder and Chairwoman of Impact Investment Exchange and other distinguished guests. After an address by Prof Yunus, we ajourned for dinner. Ivan Lau, one of our co-founders,  took the opportunity to showcase our social impact of 2011 to Prof Yunus. 

Besides the Boot Camp, a few talks and panel discussions were organized. At the Social Business for Corporate Leaders, BagoSphere set up a booth to interact with participants from many sectors. We were greatly encouraged by the excitement around Social Business. Many people we met were inspired by the story of how the Grameen family of social businesses were set up, the lessons in social development learned along way, and that the social business concept has finally arrived onto the shores of Singapore.

It has been a fantastic week of making new friends and meeting up with old ones. The experience was even made more beautiful simply because no matter how different our social ventures are, we all bind under an unsaid goal - to create more good in this world.