Our3Q – Fair Future Foundation, Indonesia
Alexandre Wettstein – founder of Fair Future – The aim of the organization is to provide free health and medical care, dedicated to needy people. They get funds by running the restaurant. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The Foundation is really successful. The hospital we are building is a huge thing. And our restaurant is the only place which allows you to have good food and pay for medical check of kids at the same time. It covers most of our expenses. Before we had the medical center here. Then we moved it to a bigger place and we decided to do something different here. Few young people had the idea of making juice to earn money for the foundation. It was difficult, there was no kitchen, nothing. But it was successful. Now, we have 22 young people from 15 to 20, we cook 250 meals per day and we give medical care to thousands of people only with the profit of this place. Every day it’s full, you can’t come here without booking. Every evening there is one doctor giving a speech. We show some movies about the Foundation and we have live music. All people working […] Read More
Our3Q – BambooKu, Indonesia
Georges Beunier – founder of BambooKu, an innovative, renewable ideas company harnessing the many marvelous qualities bamboo material has to offer and bringing it to you, in the form of environmentally friendly luxury linen products and charcoal. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Get friend with the dragon, the oven. We really have a kind of special treat. I’ve learned many things about ovens. Last time I went to Japan, where I’d learned about producing bamboo charcoal, they asked me who is starting the fire and I told them this and this guy. “NO!”, they told me. Only women can start the fire. When women start it, it keeps going for hours and hours. So we changed that. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Everything is going so fast. 20 years ago people were smiling. Everything was ok. Now we have to work more, salary didn’t increase from long time, it’s a tough time. Especially for indigenous people. You can double their salaries and it’s still nothing. And things are expensive. Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? We need to continue to work with […] Read More
Our3Q – Positive Intention, Singapore
Jannah Safri – project manager at Positive Intention, which is a social enterprise, training and development agency that organizes the following activities: Leadership Training, Personal Development, Service Learning Programmes, and Special Projects. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? We do a lot of public service. We join also national and international events and we get really positive feedback. Everybody tells us: “you are crazy people, but you make so much difference”. People love the atmosphere we create. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Man power. We need a lot of like-minded people and even for them what we do is a little bit too much, they wonder if they can handle it. We keep recruiting, reach out to more people. We use mostly social media to do that. It’s quite easy to have volunteers during school holiday when they have time. During the school year is more difficult, as people need to study. We work mostly with youth, the energy is there. Adult often are more tired, although we have some crazy adult as well. Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? Creativity, meeting like-minded […] Read More
Our3Q – engageSPARK, Philippines
Avner Miznahi – co-founder of engageSPARK, a company that enables anyone, anywhere to build and launch SMS and Voice Call alerts, surveys, reminders, educational curriculums, and on demand information campaigns to 200+ countries – within minutes. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Creating a great team and figuring out how to do it with different culture and background. Watching people growing and doing all those things together. It is amazing to watch the team facing challenges together, they are so much into it, motivated, dedicated, for me it’s a huge success. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? For me it’s mainly technology, as it’s a tech company and I’m a lawyer. Getting used to the amount of problems that exist with technology. We have bugs, customers have bugs, we get frustrated, they get frustrated and getting used to that technology will never always work, also twitter goes down, facebook goes down, it happens. And what do you do when it happens? Another big challenge has just been… we are still a very small company, selling and marketing is a big challenge. Last year we really proved the concept, we’ve seen […] Read More
Our3Q – Clay Street, Singapore
Alvin – founder of Clay Street, a social enterprise which aims at bonding team members through fun experiences and interactive co-creation with clay. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I went to the handicap association in 2009, it was recession time, right after the financial crisis. I called for some of the blind people, we set around the table. I felt sad about them, they were just waiting, doing nothing. They told me they used to work, do some Christmas cards or other things for companies. But during the recession year there was no job. They were going to the workshop but there was no job for them. Our company was in quite good stage so I decided that one day every month I would do something good, not business, but charity, volunteering. I started to think about those blind people… what do they have in their mind? How do they imagine love, for example? I got curious. Maybe we could sponsor clay and one day a month play with them. It was an experiment, I didn’t know if they would like it. 30 of them signed up. So many! I needed more people […] Read More
Our3Q – MAD Travel, Philippines
Raf Dionisio co-founder of MAD Travel and Sophie Methler community and tours development manager at MAD Travel, a company that is made to Make A Difference in the lives of each of the guests and the Filipino communities they partner with. They inspire people from all over the world to discover the very best of the Philippines: 7,107 islands rich in culture, natural beauty, and heartwarming communities. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Communities have so many visions and dreams, they know they can implement things, they have already entrepreneurial attitude, which is a huge success. Also youth, children, their visions, dreams, who they want to become in future, jobs they want to have, their English… it’s an amazing improvement compare to their parents. Another indicator of success is the level of accommodation and food for guests, it’s much better than it was. And with that comes the concept of healthy nutritious which is not common in the Philippines, most Filipino hate vegetables. Next indicator would be speaking English. Speaking English gives confidence, it’s the language of the rich here. Then also the number of kids in school. And health. Bigger houses. Roof which doesn’t […] Read More
Our3Q – First Harvest, Philippines
Tajen Sui – co-founder of First Harvest which is a proudly-Filipino brand that uses choice ingredients to whip up healthy and delicious peanut butter. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I think mothers in community. I don’t want to be introduced as founder or co-founder of First Harvest, because it doesn’t say the all story. I think mothers should deserve the same title if they would know the word, for them the word founder doesn’t exist. Sometimes we observe the capacity of our production facility and we say: we can only produce this much. And all the time mothers would overpass it. Every time we have massive orders and I’m worry, I talk to them and I ask them anxiously what should we do and they always say: ok, how much do you need? We will do it. It’s amazing to see people, mothers, daughters, neighbors… everybody helps to finalize the order. And that’s the achievement. Collective impact to make everything happen. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Scaling up. Without any business background it’s very hard for me to run the business. But as Gawad Kalinga (the parent organization, […] Read More
Our3Q – Kaya Co, Philippines
Rexy Dorado – founder of Kaya Co. “Kaya ko” means “I can.” In the same spirit, Kaya Co. envisions a global Filipino community that holds power in the collective. They dream of Filipino changemakers empowered in tackling local issues, and a diaspora that’s ready to listen, understand, and act in solidarity as the global hands and voices of home. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? It’s the people we brought together. The most exciting thing is the relationship between people. We build a network of Filipino changemakers and social entrepreneurs which we connect to young Filipinos and entrepreneurs who live now outside of the Philippines. And people start to come back here for longer, not just for our programs, and create ideas together. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The first couple of years, when we brought a small groups to the Philippines, it was easy to find people who want to try and experience that: coming back to the Philippines and working for social entrepreneurs. Now, there is still a lot of that kind of people, but there is more and more people around them who are not interested in […] Read More
Our3Q – Plush and Play, Philippines
Fabien Courteille – founder of Plush and Play, a social enterprise born inside Gawad Kalinga – the Enchanted Farm. It highlights the undervalued sewing skills of the women living in Gawad Kalinga communities to make hand-stitched soft and lovely stuffed toys and felt items. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? We can be proud to be the first Filipino toys to be sold in toy stores in the Philippines. It’s quite a message, we are home-made toys prepared by women in their houses in the Philippines and yet we can compete with mass production from China. It’s a big milestone and a big source of proud for the mothers here. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Being entrepreneur is just about facing challenges. I feel my life is about solving challenges, whenever one is solved, another come up. Basically you never can say: oh, I made it. It’s people around you saying you are successful, you are running a sustainable business. For you as entrepreneur, every single day is about solving problems: production related, supply chain related, financial, sells related, distribution… You are there to find the strength to solve […] Read More
Our3Q – The Spark Project, Philippines
Patch, Ian, Pao, RJ, Chux – founders of The Spark Project, which is a community that aims to showcase Filipino talent and ingenuity through an online crowdfunding platform where they can campaign to fund their creative, innovative, and passion-driven projects. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The community we built in the past few years. The projects we continue to stay in touch with, projects which were found through our crowdfunding platform. We have friendship born from crowdfunding activities as we work close together with the projects which use the platform. Without even asking them to give back, they are eager to help, not just to us but the all community. We were successful to create this kind of community to share and give back without really asking or imposing it. They make themselves available. It shows how we have helped them through their journey, now they look forward to help others. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? At the beginning the biggest challenge was to educate people on what crowdfunding is. This is changing a little bit. Next step is to push people to start their own crowdfunding project. […] Read More
