Good Intentions Are Not Enough

The following sections are included:

• About the Author
• Contents

Many people mean well and want to contribute solutions to local and global needs. People often want to act for the sake of “doing something”. Often, this means poorly thought-out ideas that are often unsustainable, or have little measurable social impact. Are these efforts actually helping? Are they solving problems or creating new ones? What pitfalls should a concerned giver watch for?…

The following sections are included:

• Conflict between Ethical versus Legal
• Conflicts between Ethics and Morals
• Ethics, Morals and Laws Change

Charities and non-profits have been around for many years and charities seem to get bigger with record donations received almost every year. Yet, the problem of poverty seems to be getting worse…

“Voluntourism” is getting popular, but there are many ways to smell foul. All over the internet, you can find articles about how ineffective short-term voluntourism trips to developing nations are, but many people still engage in them…

It is normal for people to push blame to others, especially when there are voiceless persons…

Note from Publisher: This chapter consists of abstract only.

When we help, we make life decisions for people we try help. When they succeed, we claim credit, when they fail, we blame them for not trying or not following instructions…

There is much evidence that has shown that depression overcomes many survivors in the shelters when they have lost everything and have everything done for them. Helplessness sets in when they feel that even simple tasks such as cooking are being done for them. There are a lot of benefits to empowering survivors to participate in the relief and recovery, yet in most cases, they are being excluded…

When people give out of pity, they tend to create dependence and a mindset that the rich should give and the poor should just receive. Donors think they are better than the recipient, and want to be treated with respect, expecting that others should view their deed with high regard…

The rising profile of the social entrepreneur on the global stage is among the most compelling phenomena in the marketplace of ideas. What I have chosen to do is to offer a series of reflections on a dimension of social entrepreneurship from the margins. Those dimension the long and frequently bitter rivalry between what could be understood as the heart and mind that comprise the body of the concept of social entrepreneurship…

Life is not fair, and fairness is not equality…

The very concept of a social enterprise is flawed. Every company pays taxes and hires people. They solve a certain need in society. Are they all considered social? What’s more, when examining these concepts in practice, flaws are even further exposed…

I’ve mentored many students on various projects. From polytechnics to universities, many of the students want to do something good, volunteer and help the needy. Their intentions are noble and their efforts are admirable…

May 2014 marked the beginning of my third year of service as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. Although the usual length of service is two years, I extended for a third year for practical reasons (pending projects) and out of sheer stubbornness (I refused to return to the U.S.). I wasn’t a seasoned expert in the field of development, nor was I exactly a newbie…

A message I share with all my volunteers on the disaster relief projects is, “Never help, instead, focus on the task you set out to do.” This is, however, easier said than done…

Many societies have come to a point where people feel that the unequal distribution of resources is part of life. Some of my friends in Singapore buy into the prosperity gospel — a religious belief among some Christians that financial blessing is the will of God for them, and that faith, positive speech, and donations will increase one’s material wealth. Others join mega churches and believe that they should earn more in order to give more…

Back in 2004, during the Asian Tsunami, I planned to go to Banda Aceh, and found a Christian group going there. So I ended up as part of a team delivering food aid to the survivors. Their intentions were good. There was definitely a great need for food when many homes were destroyed…

Note from Publisher: This chapter consists of abstract only.

I’ve seen many heartwarming projects that are providing free items to the poor. Soup kitchens in low income areas give free food to residents, doctors provide free medical services in rural areas, free vegetables and fruits are provided in areas struck by natural disasters…

In many countries, the government officials have extensive visions and plans for economic reforms. A lot of funding goes towards these programs but either through poor execution, corruption or other unforeseen situations, the reforms never have much of an impact, even though they were made with good intentions…

There are many infographics that show you that billions of people do not have access to proper sanitation. Sanitation is a concept that encompasses water supply, safe disposal of human waste, waste water and solid waste, domestic and personal hygiene. It is one of the basic determinants for quality of life…

Note from Publisher: This chapter consists of abstract only.

I met up with friend who has an egg farm and after visiting Haiti for disaster relief, I returned to start a social business. In a small village, I met up with a few families and found that they were doing little economic activities which gave them a daily wage of about $7. One of them was involved in buying a big bag of rice, carrying it up the village 15 miles away, and selling cups of rice, making very little money. As I saw that most of their food and things they use are imported, I felt that eggs would be a cheap source of protein which people could use…

In Singapore, students are required to participate in a program called (Community Involvement Program) CIP. the purpose is to nurture students to become more socially responsible. But has it genuinely yielded the relevant benefits?…

Technology changes the way we behave. In a short span of 30 years, we have we have transited from the telephone to the mobile phone to the smart phone. Not only does the way we communicate change, how we do things, our cultures and behaviors shift with technology too…

Is it possible to create positive peace?…

With existing technology, research and studies, in the fields of behavior design, innovation, social technology and finance, it is possible to prototype and create sustainable positive peace. Creating multiple ways to allow everyone on both sides of a possible conflict to engage allows them to learn more about each other.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship or responsible business) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model…

Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship…

Note from Publisher: This chapter consists of abstract only.

The following sections are included:

• The Social Business Concept
• Seven Principles: The Principles of Social Business

Social problems are extremely complex and many of them are affiliated with a lot of “baggage” about how they ought to be solved. Many of them have been around for years and the conventional problem solving methods have not worked so far. Design thinking allows us to shed much of that baggage, leading to an innovation…

The following sections are included:

• The Power of Crowds
• Success — Scale — Fail
• Why Communities?

The following sections are included:

• Crab Mentality
• Turtle Mentality

International NGOs (INGOs) have been around for many years working on the ground to provide clean water, improve education and alleviate poverty. The idea of empowering people means developing institutions which disempower themselves, however, one of the reasons why there is a huge challenge in having real impact is the fact that INGOs refuse to give up power and many have done little more than pay lip service to the sentiment…

Social intervention is a lot more complex than what people make it out to be. Over occasions such as Christmas, I see many people participate in giving. They donate money, warm clothes and many other things they do not need, and feel good about it…

Over the course of my work, I have been to various disasters, setting up Relief 2.0 teams and projects to run the last mile of disaster relief. During Hurricane Sandy, I heard over the news that various parts of New York City and New Jersey were flooded…

Lumbini World Peace Forum is partnering with Relief 2.0 on a project to run art exhibitions around the world. One of the goals is to raise awareness on the current rebuilding progress of Nepal, and another — using art to spread Nepalese culture to the world, selling art to raise funds to build art studios in the damaged villages, allowing the villagers to create handicrafts to increase their incomes to rebuild their homes…

The situation: about one month after the Japan Tsunami, the ongoing cleaning up is about to be completed in many towns. Some of the survivors are getting resettled in the temporary shelters and many of the survivors want to get their lives back to normal…

In 2015, Nepal had two terrible earthquakes that caused more than 8,000 fatalities, and two million people homeless. I was there a few days after the first earthquake and the situation was dire. There were still a lot of problems of getting aid into the land-locked country, and a lot of the aid donated to Nepal was still at the airport customs waiting to be cleared…

After a disaster, Relief B2B supports business owners and their employees to restart their businesses…

Have you been to Disneyland or Universal Studios? How was the experience? For children, Disneyland is a place where they can experience their favorite cartoon characters. They have been doing it for years: when my parents were kids, they would watch Mickey Mouse on TV and even today’s kids know about Mickey Mouse, without ever watching the cartoon on TV…

The following sections are included:

• What is Social Capital?
• How does Social Capital Work?
• The Importance of “Weak Ties”

The circular economy is a generic term for an industrial economy that is producing no waste and pollution, by design or intention, and in which material flows are of two types, biological nutrients, designed to reenter the biosphere safely, and technical nutrients, which are designed to circulate at high quality in the production system without entering the biosphere…

There is always spare capacity in a community. In marginalized communities, they may lack resources and money, but poor people are not stupid. They can come up with great solutions to fix the current problems, but due to the constant rejection and lack of resources, many of them give up trying.

Following the Nepal Earthquake in 2015, many communities were left without power. However, even after a year, the power had not returned to these communities. Many NGOs had called for donations of solar kits to give some of these communities light. I met up with several of these groups and they were interested in giving a few hundred solar kits to villages, however, as there were millions living in the dark, the question I often asked is, “How do you pick who receives these solar kits?”…

The following sections are included:

• The Need for Sustainability Globally
• Societal Gaps in the Continuum of Education
• An Incubation Hub for the Continuum of Youth Leadership Development
• Career Roadmap Development for Social Entrepreneurship
• Engaging the Business Communities for Sustainable Future Cities
• An Integrated Approach for Student Projects and Internship
• Proposed Engagement Process
• Conclusion

The following sections are included:

• Values Drive Us and the Organization
• Roles Form from Negotiating Values
• Self-organization
• Trust and Transparency

Many people do question why they have to help others. “Why me? Can’t you get a millionaire to support?”…

Innovation is a new idea, or a more effective device or process. Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs…

The people you engage with may not be pleasant or grateful. Your friends and family may turn on you, and others in society may question your motivations or sanity…

I do feel that this may be a secret ingredient in sustainability which is much needed in a good social project. I’ve seen many successful social innovations, and often ask this question, why is this not succeeding everywhere? And one of the simple reasons — scale…

Helping is complicated and easy to mess up. That much is obvious now at the end of this book. But this does not mean it is ok to not try. Doing nothing at all is not a good option…

The following section is included:

• Appendix