The Social Business Day 2017

King's Global Health & Social medicine student and President of award-winning Enactus KCL, Emily Brothwood, shares her story of travelling to Dhaka to attend the 7th Social Business Day hosted by Nobel Laureate and entrepreneur Professor Muhammad Yunus.

“Dhaka is a funny place for a conference” said my Mother when I informed her that I was going to the Social Business Day at the end of July in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I had never been to a conference before and I certainly had never been to Bangladesh so I wasn’t able to give her any more information other than “people will fly a long way to see Muhammad Yunus”.

“People will fly a long way to see Muhammad Yunus”.

Now, my Mother has no idea who Muhammad Yunus is, but he is a truly inspiring man and people travel far and wide to attend his events. Yunus is a pioneer of social business, microcredit and microfinance and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank which gives loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.

This was what I was looking forward to as I made the rather uncomfortable journey from Dubai to Dhaka at 3 o’clock in the morning. Stepping off the plane in Dhaka was everything I expected: an exhilarating, sprawling, crazy city, full of uncertainty. At the visa application table I met a man from Japan who, despite the exhaustion behind his eyes, was full of excitement for the conference the next day. That’s when it hit me how huge this event was – people were travelling from all over the world to see Muhammad Yunus and hear what he had to say, I had traveled over 9000km for goodness sake – this was really exciting! After waiting an hour for my bag, spoken at loudly in Bengali and borrowing some very kind people’s phones, I made it to the hostel, had some tea and slept.

Image credit: Dhaka night, Adam Cohn, flickr

A few hours later, I awoke to discover a notification on the Social Business Day Facebook page which read:

‘For to security reasons, the Social Business Day will not take place tomorrow. Sixteen hours prior to the event, the Bangladeshi police withdrew permission. This is not a joke. The Yunus Centre will provide more information later today/tonight.’

Well of course I thought it was a joke.

It wasn’t.

It was about this time that the other delegate from King’s, Ed Halliday, Accelerator Manager in the Entrepreneurship Institute, arrived after his long 12-hour flight from London. Looking back on it, perhaps telling someone who you have never met and who has been on a plane for 12 hours that the conference they have travelled to attend has been cancelled was maybe not the best way to be greeted. But alas, someone had to break it to him! We both decided to wait it out and in the meantime, took the opportunity to see a bit of Dhaka.

Dhaka was bustling, vibrant and intoxicating.

Stalls lined the streets brimming with peculiar looking fruit and rickshaws engulfed the roads making crossing a treacherous affair. Despite the darkness and the late hour, the roads, shops and stalls were full of people, many of whom gave us a slight look of surprise with the odd “hello, how are you” from giggling children as we passed. We had a wonderful meal which was ordered through a conversation that consisted of ‘chicken?’, ‘biryani?’, ‘naan?’, ‘chicken?’, ‘daal?’, ‘yes, ok, ummm, ok, ok’, and despite our embarrassingly low level of Bengali we had a very tasty (and spicy) meal.

When we got back to the hostel, we discovered that the event was to be moved to a nearby hotel and a condensed version of events put together for the international delegates. The next morning, not really knowing what to expect, we made our way through the searing heat and humidity to The Meridian Hotel. When we arrived, we were not filled with optimism at the sight of an empty lobby, but up a lift and past some stressed looking interns and we entered a room full of energetic conversation and international delegates from across the world.

We entered a room full of energetic conversation and international delegates from across the world.

At such short notice, this beautiful room, fit with a small stage, large television, plenty of drinks and snacks and framed with stunning chandeliers had been sourced and put together – some phenomenal organisation which I am sure was very stressful and deserves a lot of credit!

The topic of the event was ‘Can Wealth Concentration Be Stopped?’, an interesting topic and particularly relevant in today’s climate. The event aimed to discuss this question in relation to social business and how businesses with a social benefit can reduce wealth concentration across the world. The range of fascinating talks began with the keynote speaker, Thomas Gass, Assistant Secretary General of the UN. Gass discussed the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the role that Social Business can play in achieving these goals. The importance of social business in bettering the world was a theme that carried throughout many of the other talks, including those from the President of the World Olympians Association as well as a fascinating talk from the Executive Vice Chair of the Indian Institute of Management.

As well as these esteemed speakers, there was the highly anticipated talk from Professor Yunus himself. Yunus presented the amazing new building they had built to hold the Social Business Day in Dhaka that we were sadly unable to be in. He also discussed what he calls the three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero carbon emissions, a great way to look at the problems we face in the world and something positive to aim for. This was followed by panel discussions where the practicalities of social business were discussed by a range of social entrepreneurs and members of Yunus Centres across the world. Yunus reiterated throughout the event that it was a family, he said ‘people ask me why we do the Social Business Day every year and I reply, why do you do Christmas every year?’. For him, the Social Business Day is an opportunity to get the ‘family’ together, to be recharged and inspired so those attending are able to go back to their own countries and continue all the amazing work that they are doing with renewed energy. It was encounters throughout the day with these passionate social entrepreneurs, eager to share what they have been doing, that made the event so fascinating. People who would have flown twice around the world to meet with like-minded people and share their stories, their successes and their failures.

The Social Business Day is an opportunity to get the ‘family’ together, to be recharged and inspired so those attending are able to go back to their own countries and continue all the amazing work that they are doing with renewed energy.

The Social Business Day 2017 was an amazing experience and there are certainly ideas, projects and passions that I can bring back to my own society at King’s, Enactus KCL. Professor Yunus and his team did a fantastic job organising the programme. Despite the difficult circumstances, they hosted a tremendous event with many inspiring speakers, not least of which Professor Yunus himself, who we hope to see in London in November. When people with such passion and drive to change the world for the better come together in one place, one cannot help but feel inspired and hopeful for the future. This conference helped to demonstrate how important it is to integrate social business into the everyday. Reducing wealth concentration and making business fundamentally socially beneficial is something that we must internalise and decide to believe in for the future of business and the way we interact with the world.

King's College London has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Yunus Centre. King's is a leader in social entrepreneurship, awarded a SEE Changemaker HEFCE award for support for social entrepreneurship and Enactus KCL are representing the UK at the Enactus World Cup. Professor Yunus will visit King's later this year. Contact the Entrepreneurship Institute for more information.