Reflection Journal: Week 06

The summary of the main ideas of week 06 topics mainly talk about sustainability and funding sources of social enterprises and their social value creation. How social enterprises raise funds to finance their activities should they be an NGO as traditional philanthropy doesn't provide them with a stable, long term source of finance. The lessons teaches us about a regular startup funding as network investments, banking, equity debt, convertible debt, crowdfunding etc. as well as social entrepreneurs thinking innovatively and identifying partners who can bring economic value to both parties.

What did spark my interest was Michael Porters video on why business can be good at solving problems. He recognized the seemingly problems in the world, poor nutrition, access to clean water, climate change, deforestation, lack of skills, not enough food, health care and pollution. Simply put, why do we have all of these social problems? In response to these rising social problems, the past several years has seen the ballooning of the social sector, NGOs and social organizations to find solutions to these societal problems. He emphasized on us can’t make a large scale impact on the problems because on the current models, we don’t have enough resources. But in all the fundamentals are that businesses must impact and address these problems.

“If poverty makes us miserable, it stands to reason that wealth makes life worth living. But does it? Psychologists aren’t so sure” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/07/can-money-buy-happiness. Mosiah 2:41 “And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it”.
President David O. McKay has also said that Virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and in keeping the commandments of God lead to a happy life, so therefore money cannot buy happiness it is through these attributes that we all can gain happiness.

My augment is that money cannot change the world; we only can change the world when we learn the basic principles established by the Lord and learn basic health issues like nutrition, not polluting our waters, clean environment so we will not get sick, learn skills so we can feed our families. We need to change the mindset.  

Weekly Prompts Lesson 05

The summary of the main ideas and topics of the week mostly talks about the Theory of Change which is the change a social enterprises creates through its actions, It talks about the approach social enterprises engaged in in planning, evaluating their activities, projects and services to deliver quality services to communities. The approach involves the identification of desired outcomes.

What sparks my interest is lesson 05 reading which talks about Getting Results: Outputs, Outcomes and Impact and used to describe the results of nonprofits. Outputs: describe activities done by nonprofits and it consists of goods or services that are produced by these non-profits which become available for use outside that enterprise. Outcomes: becomes the observed effects or end result of the outputs on the beneficiaries of the nonprofit. Impact: This is the strong effect or influences the activities of nonprofit have on those they are serving. This is important for nonprofits to attempt to track their activities in some way.

The conclusions drawn from this “Hurling and Community Service” is making a difference where you can. The connection between the article “Hurling and Community Service” and setting my goals are to effect a positive change on the community. My goals are to support local organizations, and agencies recognize their importance to the community’s quality of life and the development of recreation facilities within communities.

Week 04 Journal Social Innovation

Week 04 lesson is all about developing a creative way of solving problems which is design thinking, a process, an action, a protocol for solving problems and discovering new opportunities. Design thinking consists of four key elements, define the problem, create and consider many options, refine selected directions and pick the winner, execute. It helps the designer to ask a more fundamental question if it is poverty alleviation, like “Why does mass poverty exist?” which leads the team to things like improving education, efficient way of resource distribution.

What sparks my interest is David Kelley’s lecture on creative confidence; he said if we all stick with the process, if we stick with it, we will end up doing amazing things. And we will surprise ourselves at just how innovative we and our teams really are. We need to rise above the fear of judgment that we all have, that prevent us to be creative, and we should overcome the fear of being judged; By gaining confidence we reach "self-efficacy," the sense of changing the world and attain what we all set out to do.

Why design thinking is an important skill in social innovation today is that by using design thinking, it can help tackle more complex problems like finding ways to solve poverty related issues which are prevalent in Ghana and affordable healthcare issues.” It approaches problem solving from the point of view of the end user and calls for developing a deep understanding of unmeet needs, thus avoiding the pitfall of imposing the wrong solution on a community” Source: http://voices.mckinseyonsociety.com/why-social-innovators-need-design-thinking/

Week 03 Journal

The main ideas and topics of week 03 deals with Root Cause Analysis, which is an approach or technique use in identifying the underlying causes of an incident which happens in our everyday life or setups so that effective solutions are implemented. It helps find the underlying cause of the problem and addresses, what happened, why it happened and find solutions to eliminate or reduce its impacts.

Misconceptions, bias, ignorance of global issues was also address by Hans and Ola Rosling, Their discussion centered on how we can be better informed about the world.

What spark interest is how ignorant we all are, our neighborhood where we grew up gave us a very biased view of how life is on this planet, personal bias that is the different experiences we all have had from our communities and people we meet. With the four rules of thumb, we could probably answer better than the chimps, because the chimps cannot do that.

Why social innovation is becoming more prevalent in today’s world are that it has thought us a whole new way of doing things, strategies, concepts, ideas that meet the social needs from education to community development and health.

Jeffrey Thompson’s article, the Gospel, and social innovation brings to fore our social responsibilities as God children on earth. We need to discover our calling which is God’s given gift to rendered service to mankind. John Calvin “argued that God endows each of us with particular talents and gifts and that it is our calling”

“How often in life do we set our own roots into the soil of life and become root bound? Under these conditions we too must struggle to make progress. Oh, change is hard! Change can be rough”. Marvin J. Ashton This fearful change has enlightened my mind to be self-reliant, to able to do things on my own and never depend on someone.