Changing the world through business

Director of the Lincoln University Yunus Centre for Social Business, Dr Ani Kartikasari, is behind the new Social Entrepreneurship course for third year students, which starts in Semester 2.

A social business is set up to solve a specific problem to the benefit of poor or disadvantaged members of society. Unlike a charity, they generate profit and aim to be financially self-sustaining.

Dr Kartikasari said social entrepreneurship can improve both society and environmental wellbeing, particularly in the rural sector of developing countries, from community-based eco-tourism, micro-entrepreneurship, value-adding activities, and poverty alleviation projects

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 will also come up with their own business ideas.

The Lincoln University Yunus Centre for Social Business, established in 2017, is the first 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.