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The World that Changes the World

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The World that Changes the World by Willie Cheng et al (ed) John Wiley & Sons HK$240

Somewhere in the limestone hills of Guizhou, a group of women making handicrafts are wondering how they can market and distribute their products so they can supplement their rural incomes. They have something to sell but not the business skills, the contacts or the seed money to make the value-added venture work.

Several hundred kilometres away in Hong Kong, a self-made billionaire launches a foundation with the aim of tackling poverty on the mainland. The organisation has money, time and business acumen to contribute, but not the connections with people on the ground to make a difference.

One is a group of social entrepreneurs looking to make a systematic change for the better and the other is the venture philanthropist looking to do more than dispense money. Together they have the potential to transform lives and add to the health of what Willie Cheng and Sharifah Mohamed describe in The World that Changes the World as the 'social ecosystem'.

In the book, Cheng, Mohamed and more than a dozen essay contributors from industry and community welfare aim to give a broad overview of how the different players in this ecosystem can and should come together to create lasting, effective civic change for the better, a 'self-sustaining community of interdependent organisms'.

For a start, there's no shortage of problems to tackle. In addition to the global issues of the rich-poor divide, terrorism, organised crime, climate change and energy insecurity, people in developing countries have to grapple with food and water shortages, gender inequality and internal migration. The developed world, meanwhile, has its hands full with non-infectious diseases such as diabetes, mental health challenges and joblessness.

In the past, these problems would have been left to governments or charities to solve but, increasingly, civic groups with a business bent are filling in the gaps. These are 'social enterprises', businesses with a civic mission or nonprofits organised like businesses, using the principles of the market to realise a community goal. One of the best known examples is Grameen Bank, the Nobel Prize-winning microfinance organisation that directs its services at women and the poor.

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