One of the organisers, Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship of Oxford Said Business Management School, supported by the Skoll Foundation which was established by Jeff Skoll, the founder of well-known e-bay. The Center aims to be the world's leading academic institution for social entrepreneurship. By bring together world-class research, both theoretical and practical, the Center will move the agenda for social entrepreneurship forward to help catalyse and support global social ventures that can bring about real and enduring change for communities in need.

This forum was the first one held in China on social enterprise and social innovation, which attracted more than 200 experts, scholars, entrepreneurs, directors of NPOs and MBA members from 14 nations and areas and 17 provinces of China. Mr. Jin Deshui, Vice Governor of Zhejiang Province, Mr. Yang Wei, President of Zhejiang Province, Ms. Rowena Young, Director of Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship of Oxford, and Ms. Vivienne Tan, President of Entrepreneurs School of Asia addressed opening speeches.
Recommended by GLI, Mr. Kensuke Sasaki from ETIC which is a social entrepreneur incubator in Japan and Mr. Ito Ken who is our networker were invited to attend the forum.

The following are the brief introductions of practitioners' speeches:

The Philippines
Ms. Vivienne Tan, President of Entrepreneurs School of Asia (ESA): Social Entrepreneur under Globalization
The concept of social enterprise in Ms. Tan’' mind is that the enterprise makes both social and business profits. The Philippines is still a developing country with many slums. Social entrepreneurship is a good approach against poverty. ESA aims at supporting Micro-Entrepreneurs who are the poor of the city. As a policy of the Philippine government, a small amount of money will be provided to micro-entrepreneurs from government. How to use the money efficiently is the challenge. ESA provides lectures and training programmes to these people. Recently, ESA popularized the concept of social enterprise in high schools in collaboration with AIESEC. They have trained 200 students in 20 high schools. Each group will be staffed by a teacher or student from ESA. This programme makes high school students believe that they can change a poor community by their techniques and power. The aim of ASE is to help 200 communities in 2007 and to help 2000 communities in 2008. Finally, Ms. Tan said, social enterprise covered many fields and it is hard to explain clearly, but it is the best thing in life.

Luis Oquinena, Executive Director of Gawad Kalinga: Mobilizing a Nation against Poverty
Gawad Kalinga is the biggest NGO in the Philippines solving poverty problems. It aims at ridding the Philippines of slums, beggars and starving people. Gawad Kalinga empowers the inhabitants of the 25 poorest communities in the Philippines to believe that they can create a new life by themselves. A series of community regeneration activities have been operated to rebuild the self-esteem of the community's inhabitants such as the 'self-sufficiency' programme which helps people plant vegetables in their own backyards, the job training programme which releases inhabitants' potential and provides jobs in the community such as community director, security guide and chef. Gawad Kalinga aims to build a community with high quality not luxury. In the community, there are beautiful vegetable gardens with fruitful trees The shops and restaurants are competitive in their markets. The past slum are to be turned into be a tourist site. The Gawad Kalinga Model has been an example for other communities to replicate.

South Korea
Prof. Dong-Sung Cho, Seoul National University: Corporate Social Responsibility practice in Korea
More and more corporates in Korea realize that commercial profits and social profits complement each other. But only multi-national companies can reach the CSR international standards for the standards are very high. Prof. Cho combines the Business Report, Social Responsibility Report and Environmental Protection Report into one Sustainable Development Report. This kind of report has five levels  - the lowest level just asks for the report of what the corporate did in the past year and the highest level requires the corporate to submit a Corporate Performance, Social Reputation and Marketing Strategy Value report and other data. The standard gets progresively higher and higher from lower level to higher level. Different corporates choose corresponding levels to report according to their scale and power. It encourages more corporates to get involved in CSR activities. Now there are 31 corporates in Korea who choose to report in the Sustainable Development Report format. In addition, Dr. Cho organizes 'The Best Forum' to discuss the management and practice of CSR each month (starting in March, 2003), and organizes 'The Best CEO Club' once every three months for CEOs to study and discuss corporate ethical management.

China
Henry To, President of Bright China Foundation: The Practice of Social Entrepreneurship in China
Bright China Foundation is a non-public collecting foundation registered in 2005. Mr. To emphasized in his speech that the aim of the foundation is to 'Teach One Man to Fish'. It means to help people to develop in dignity and to dedicate themselves to their own development. The main programmes of Bright China are about education. For instance, they provide scholarship for poor students. In 2006, they have provided RMB 1,000,000 for 1000 students in 100 high schools in 20 poor counties. In the rural English teacher training programme, they have trained 134 rural English teachers in 12 provinces in 2006. Besides, in the university student ability training programme, they provide competent volunteer resources for rural schools and NPOs by encouraging students to teach in poor areas. Bright China now pays attention to social entrepreneurship training by popularizing Drucker's NGO Strategic Management to improve the management performance of NGOs and encourage young people to become a entrepreneur.

Jianhua Li, President of Wanshili Group: Social Responsibility and Development Opportunity of Private Corporates in Zhejiang Province
Wanshili Group is a famous corporate in Zhejiang Province, whose main silk products are exported to Europe and America. In the speech of Mr. Li, he told us that the company faced a lot of problems 5 years ago because it didn't reach international standards in Environment and CSR. Over recent years Wanshili Group has paid much attention to CSR activities such as environmental protection, building public-welfare hospital to turn the corporate aim from product-oriented to human-oriented. Finally, the company has passed the CSR qualifications of overseas suppliers. It is the first Chinese private corporate to submit a CSR report. The new CSR plan of Wanshili Group is to get international CSR qualifications from 100 overseas suppliers. Up to now, none of the Chinese coporates has reached this standard. Mr. Li said at first many supervisors and staff didn't understand CSR, but after 5 years they realized that CSR activities would bring more economic profits, social reputation and global opportunities to the company.

Although the speeches of social entrepreneurs and practitioners were less than expected, they still showed typical model of social entrepreneurship. There were many excellent practitioners in audiences such as Hong Kong Council of Social Services (HKCSS). HKCSS provides an exchanging and training platform for social enterprises in Hong Kong, which now has more than 100 social enterprise members. In their Hong Kong Social Enterprise Service Guide published in March, 2007, it lists in detail the service, area and contact information of social enterprises in Hong Kong to help citizens to find the services they need easily. In addition, in cooperation with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Commission on Poverty of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region and the other universities and authorities, HKCSS launched the HKCSS Institute which is a training and resource institute for NGOs.

The forum provided an exchange platform for social entrepreneurs from different countries, but it's a pity that few Chinese practitioners attended the forum compared with the number of overseas attendees. China is on a basic level of social entrepreneurship, lacking both theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Chinese social enterprises will gradually develop since overseas enterprises provide us best practices and experience.

By Jeanne Zhu
GLI Programme Assistant, Shanghai