Our3Q – Bettr Barista, Singapore
Tania (Content and Communication manager) and Pamela (founder) are working for Bettr Barista, world-class coffee education, certification and learning-for-life programme that enrich body, mind and soul. They organize commercial courses as well as social ones to support people from disadvantage backgrounds. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I think for being still around 4–5 years later, being in a place like that, much bigger than at the beginning, having people recognizing our name, like you. Your request for interview is also a success for me. Not even mentioning the 15 intakes of people from disadvantage background who went through our social programs and the employees, who build their career as coffee professionals right now. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Every day is challenging, there is so many different aspects in what we do. Number one is that because we are a social enterprise, we don’t have big corporate budget. And with all the things we want to do, funds disappear very quickly. To give marketing as an example: We just take what we have and try to do what is possible. Sometimes we have to be in five different places at once. […] Read More
Our3Q – Dignity Kitchen, Singapore
Koh Seng Choon – founder of Dignity Kitchen, a social enterprise which supports people from disadvantage backgrounds, and with mental, physical, intellectual or social disabilities, by providing them education and jobs. They also organize free city tours and lunches for elderly people. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? I trained over 400 people with disabilities. We offered over 40000 lunches to elderly in the last 6 years. As entrepreneur, I provide employment for 60 people. My success would be seeing people coming back to our food court. The transformation of disadvantage people who start to earn money, make a living. They get their dignity. Their own money to spend. And they also come back and pay for lunches for elderly. They understood the logic behind this place. It’s very touching. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The biggest challenge is not money. The biggest challenge is empathy. People’s perception of those with disabilities. When I started I gave people here badges where it was written: “I’m blind”, “I’m mental”. What happened? There were zero buyers. Clients got scared: mental people cooking? For two weeks we had no sells, everybody run away. Finally, […] Read More
Our3Q – Minka, Philippines
Mark – founder of Minka – a social enterprise which sells and promotes the use of biodegradable toothbrushes made of bamboo as an alternative to conventional toothbrushes made of hard plastic. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Hard to say… I’ve been invited to speak in some collages and events. It’s always amazing because people are really interested, they like the idea and want to know more themselves as well as educate more people on that issue. For me it’s a good accomplishment, gives me the chance to reach more people. Another success would be to be sold in mayor retailers. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? Bamboo toothbrush is a new concept for everyone. People are used to plastic, they don’t know if they want to put bamboo in their mouth. A big percent of people who actually buy our toothbrush are those who are just curious about it, but how to make them to buy it again? Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? I need more big clients, like hotels for example. I try to convince some of them to go green. They throw […] Read More
Our3Q – Good Food Community, Philippines
Charlene – founder of Good Food Community is about growing a sustainable society that nourishes everyone—you, the farmers, the land and generations to come. The multiple crises of our age serve as an invitation to evolve a new system and culture—one that puts the planet and people first. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? For me, in some way, this is the life I would dream of. When I was in high school and I would imagine myself doing what I’m doing now, well, seems pretty cool. If you distance yourself from all the challenges and day to day problems it’s really amazing: all the people you meet, kind of conversations and relationship you have and how the community grows out of this initiative… it’s just great. Sometimes we are cutting vegetables with the farmers, sitting at the same table, talking and, all in all, it’s exactly what we wanted. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? We have to deal with different groups. One of them is consumers and urban communities. We have to educate them how to cook different vegetables and be flexible with what they get from farmers instead of […] Read More
Our3Q – Monsopiad Cultural Village, Malaysia
Sasha – current manager of Monsopiad Cultural Village – a cultural space close to Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, where tourists can see and experience the traditional way of living of the Kadazan, the biggest tribe in east Malaysia. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? Every day new things show up. Every day. I don’t come here for a week, as I have another job in Kota Kinabalu, and at least 2-3 issues popped up. But we treat our staff better than the previous management and that’s what makes the difference. The staff wants to invest time in our Cultural Village, to make it better. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? We need cash, we need money. Somebody who would like to support us in rebuilding the structures. Most of the buildings in the Cultural Village are in bad shape, we need to repair them to go further. We also need money for advertisement to reach tourists and travel agencies. So the Cultural Village will blossom again. Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this situation? More activities, more ideas for tourists. We would like to do a guesthouse. Create […] Read More
Our3Q – Biji Biji, Malaysia
Azam – founder of The Biji-Biji Initiative, a social enterprise that aims to share progressive ideas with everyone. They champion sustainable living, reuse waste creatively and they love collaborative production. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? My partners and I are the most proud about the fact that we pay almost half a million ringgits in salaries (ed. about 100.000 euro). As founders and directors we don’t pay ourselves much more than we pay others. There is never more than twice the difference between the persons with highest and lowest salary. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The challenge is, as in any other business, that you have to learn constantly. I don’t know much about marketing, I’m not trained in it. But it’s important so I need to learn it. And once we start with marketing, we have to constantly improve it. The same works for production. Management. People. Everything. And the challenge is also to challenge other people. We like to do that. We like to challenge other companies, our clients. We like to challenge customers. We challenge people who don’t want to stop using plastic bags. We challenge […] Read More
Our3Q – Batik Boutique, Malaysia
Amy – founder of Batik Boutique, place that provides fair fashion, home goods and gifts that empower the people behind each product. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? The story of Nore, mother of seven kids. When I met her, they had only one motorbike for 8 people. She was really desperate and she never smiled. We started to work with her. She had a sewing machine and even when it broke she borrowed another one from somebody. She really wanted to change her life and it inspired me to turn this initiative into a business. Right now she has a car, her husband opened a bus business to bring kids from school, thanks to the money they were able to save. We also invested in a dental program, she has all new set of teeth our company paid for. Before she basically had no teeth and she is only 35. This dental program changed her life, the relation with husband and children, she stands taller, smiles all the time. She is a completely different person today. Recently she also told me that for the first time in her life she was able to give […] Read More
Our3Q – Give.my, Malaysia
Felix – founder of Give.my, which is a crowdfunding platform that enables the public to directly contribute to teacher’s projects across Malaysia. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? One of the projects from our crowdfunding platform. It’s a project of a teacher from Sarawak who has to travel 3,5h to reach his school. He is so dedicated to his job! It motivates me and reminds me why I do it. I see so many teachers who really want to do amazing things, but they don’t have enough funding. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? The biggest challenge is still to educate the all Malaysia to understand what crowdfunding is. People from cities already know it but we need to educate also people from other places. Let people know what Give.my does and why. If a lot of Malaysians know what Give.my is, they can think about being part of it. Education is the most important thing. If education is not solid, everything falls apart. And thanks to Give.my people can directly support teachers they feel very strongly about, without any middle organization. Q3: What advice do you have for yourself in this […] Read More
Our3Q – Continuity Skateboards, Malaysia
Wann – founder of Continuity – skateboard initiative which builds community and supports local kids and teenagers. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? For becoming entrepreneur. At the beginning I just wanted to create a skate park, now I see more and more ways to sustain it. I started almost 4 years ago. I brought a piece of rock and put it in the park so kids can come and play with skateboards. And I saw they were coming. More than 2 years ago I started to build a proper skate park, also with shops, with drinks, different businesses around. It became amazing. It’s easy to start a blog, but to maintain it with interesting content is harder, right? This is the success for me. I make sure that business is going on. Every month we have different events, things are happening. Q2: What is the biggest challenge for you now? When it becomes a community space, the biggest challenge is to unite its members. There are a lot of people, some of them can get crazy, start a fight and it’s not good for the park. The challenge is to make people feel comfortable […] Read More
Our3Q – Tandemic, Malaysia
Kal – founder of Tandemic, a company that provides consulting, training, and venture building for people who want to create social change. Q1: What do you appreciate yourself in the business mainly for? From the traditional point of view, two of our initiatives: Do Something Good and Make We Can are our success. Make We Can became the largest design thinking-based program in SEA with 5.000 people per workshop. Do Something Good is quite a sizeable platform, with few hundred thousand registered volunteers. From a less traditional point of view of success, we are proving that something is possible. A lot of people think that the kind of work which we do in Malaysia is just not possible. Building social venture and generating income, what the hell is this! For me it is part of building a new kind of culture. You don’t have to be poor and run an NGO which is constantly straggling to make impact and bring money. It doesn’t have to be necessary how the social sector looks like. For me creating that culture and a community of people around this organization thinking that way it has been more important. Q2: What is the biggest challenge […] Read More
