Trading Tuesday: More than profit
The term ‘entrepreneur’ has been tainted with many negative connotation. Greedy, irresponsible, money-orientated, blood-sucking evil – was among the not-so-nice names we’ve been called.
People always think that all we care is ‘the bottom line’. We will stop at nothing to make our profit. While there are people like this who dabbled in business, there’s an increasing number of entrepreneurs that seek ‘more than profit’.
Ever since I read ‘Banker to the Poor’ and ‘Creating World without Poverty‘ by Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of Grameen Bank, I was introduced to the concept of ’social entrepreneurship’. A truly eye-opening and inspiring concept.
For years we were taught to define ourselves in one dimension while the fact is, human is multi-dimensional being. We love money, but we also love people. In fact, most of us actually love people more, but we were not given an avenue, a workable concept to operate ourselves. That’s why when I came across social entrepreneurship concept, I feel like a part of me is finally at home.
For me personally, I would adopt some of the concept and applied it in my conventional enterprise. That’s why I started the Elwarda Asal collection in my Elwarda Accessories business. Through Elwarda Asal, I am able to work on an enterprise that is ‘more than just profit’.
I always feel very strongly about people working hard to make their own living. I found it very humbling that these Orang Asal (indigenous people of Peninsular and East Malaysia) would find things in their environment and use it to create beautiful crafts and accessories. They did not have the same opportunities as us, to be born in the land of gadgets and trinkets.
I hope that by selling some of their products, they will be even more motivated to work harder and smarter to sustain themselves. I hope when I am able to sell their handmade accessories, they will realise that there are more than one channel of ‘rezeki’ for them. I hope they will realise that there are many people out here who cares for them and who loves them and who will support them in more ways than one.
(suddenly I became a bit emotional *sob-sob*)
I am still very early in my venture. I may make many mistakes but I aim to keep improving myself and work on creating a truly workable system for Elwarda Asal. I also aim to keep on adding a ’social entrepreneurship’ concept to all my future businesses, Insya-Allah.
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Image from here
Image from here
