Highlighting benefits of social enterprises

More young people are being encouraged to take part in social enterprises, which is becoming an increasingly popular business model across China.

Social enterprises are typically classified as a socially responsible businesses that aim to generate profit while helping address a social or environmental issue.

"An increasing number of social enterprises have been started in China in recent years," said Shen Dongshu, chief executive officer of Beijing Leping Welfare Foundation.

"These social entrepreneurs greatly help society through sustainable public services and other innovative ways."

The development of social enterprises in China, however, still faces a variety of challenges and more work needs to be done to support their further development, Shen told delegates at the recent 2014 Social Enterprises Forum in Shanghai. The event was jointly hosted by Singapore-based DBS Bank, Antai College of Economics and Management, and the nonprofit organization Enactus at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The forum attracted more than 300 people from universities and publicly owned social enterprises who discussed the difficulties and challenges of operating social enterprises and explored more feasible ways for the future development of the sector in China.

Yao Kunjie, the investment director of the Social Enterprise Research Center, told the forum that lack of funding remains the major hurdle for social enterprises in China, followed by overall public awareness, shortage of staff, and low efficiency by many organizations.

During the event, DBS Bank (China) announced a new round of support for four environmental protection organizations. Since 2012, the bank has sponsored a variety of projects managed by some 15 social enterprises in China involved mainly in activities focused on helping disadvantaged groups.

The projects have helped improve living conditions of the disadvantaged groups, increase their chances of employment, and find ways to integrate the groups into urban life.

"We believe in identifying sustainable ways to give back to society," said Neil Ge, CEO of DBS Bank (China). "There is a famous Chinese proverb that says 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime', and that's very much our philosophy in providing a social public services with more vitality."

In order to encourage more young people to participate in social enterprises, DBS has also launched a project which provides seed funding to entrepreneurs, in partnership with the nonprofit Youcheng China Social Entrepreneur Foundation.

Every year, they select social enterprises with the best development plans and offer them financial support, a program which has been particularly popular with college students.