The social business: the ingredient for urbanization?
Our societies got developed through urbanization. They evolved from rural forms to urbanized forms. It played an important role in the development of several countries in allowing societies to achieve “fast economic progress” as the website allfreepapaers.com says.
Nowadays, after having helped a lot of countries to develop themselves, it causes numerous challenges we all have to deal with. How can social business alleviate the social challenges caused by urbanization (slum dwelling, environmental consequences, insecurity,…)?
The role of social business is to face social challenges caused by urbanization
Urbanization offered a lot of advantages to societies by allowing them to leave their first form which was the rural one to the urbanized zone. Therefore, it has offered societies better infrastructure facilities, medical facilities, educational opportunities etc …As the same site tells us. However, it also confronted them to new challenges: to fight against slum dwelling, environmental consequences, insecurity and unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, unemployment…
In order to face the challenges caused by urbanization, Muhammad Yunus created the Social Business which goal is to resolve social and economical problems because he wants to create “a world without poverty, Social Business and the future of capitalism and Building Social Business, the new kind of capitalism that serves humanity’s most pressing needs”. In this aim, social enterprises take their excesses as resources for their social projects. Their goal is to fight against all types of exclusions, to help elderly people to live in a better way, to protect the environment… We can take an example of social society by quoting RLABS: A SOCIAL REVOLUTION. It was founded in 2008 by Marlon Parker and its aim is to help people who cannot access to new technologies giving them access to internet, Mobil phone etc…
However, other solutions also exist to deal with challenges due to urbanization
Even if social business is really helpful facing to challenges caused by urbanization, it also exist other solutions to deal with them. Indeed, we can quote several other forms. For example, in order to clear slums, governments apply the policy of massive exclusion in order to give more importance to urbanism operations. We can also find new forms of social actors as inhabitants associations. Moreover, Non-Governmental Organizations are trying to contribute to the mobilization of the population and to the realization of city’s projects.
We can not deny that inhabitants are participating on the urbanization in cities but they should not be seen as a possibility of a “free workforce”. In order to avoid this kind of unfortunate situation, they have to be conscientious of their own role despite the problem of education of people which can prevent them to elaborate a constructive reflex ion on their importance in societies and the urbanization process. Besides, in an international level, we can speak about the United Nations and their program concerning the environment. Then, we can also speak about their will to find solutions to resolve social problems caused by urbanization. For example, the Millenium Development Goals organized by the United Nations in 2000 which aim is to fight against the extreme poverty, the hunger and the disease.
Thus, we can say that the urbanization process allowed to societies in the whole world to develop themselves and to know an important economic progress. Nonetheless, it also brought them several problems in a lot of levels: environment, slum dwelling, security, employment… Social business, created by the professor Muhammad Yunus to resolve problem of poverty and inequalities, helped to deal with these challenges. But this was not the only way to fight them: indeed, there are several solutions which are helpful to face them. Besides, social business is more powerful because it can be applied to other situations than only to the challenges caused by urbanization.