A new course at Lincoln University is seeking to give students the skills to address social issues through innovative business ideas.
Director of the Lincoln University Yunus Centre for Social Business, Dr Ani Kartikasari, is behind the new third year Social Entrepreneurship course, which starts in Semester 2.
A social business is designed to solve a specific problem for the benefit of poor or disadvantaged members of society. Unlike a charity, it generates profit and aims to be financially self-sustaining.
Dr Kartikasari said social entrepreneurship could improve both society and environmental wellbeing, particularly in the rural sectors of developing countries. Projects might include community-based eco-tourism, micro-entrepreneurship, value-adding activities, and poverty alleviation.
Case studies of individual social entrepreneurs and examples of social enterprises will be studied in the course, while professionals from a range of industry sectors will present guest lectures on relevant and topical issues.
Students are also given opportunities to come up with their own business ideas.
The Lincoln University Yunus Centre for Social Business, established in 2017, is the first of its kind at a New Zealand university.
Yunus social business centres were started by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which helps alleviate poverty through microfinancing and lending to the country’s poor without the need for collateral.
