In a country with more than 100 million people, the opportunities that open up to create businesses in addition to being profitable can be sustainable, seeking to solve social or environmental problems.
CONEVAL considers that 46% of Mexicans live in some situation of poverty and 10.4% is in extreme poverty, this leads us to think and create ventures with the aim of solving certain problems that problems in decades have not been able to do front and cut the root issues.
With the poverty factor that Mexico lives plus the factor of lack of opportunities on the part of some economic sectors to be able to undertake, it has led us to have to reach out to others and seek teamwork.
Armando Laborde, director of Ashoka in Mexico and Central America, an organization that promotes social entrepreneurship in more than 70 countries, considers that a social entrepreneur differs in that his motivator is to solve a social or environmental problem. "He is a person who is upset and wants to see something changed," he says.
Various analysts consider that social entrepreneurs have the characteristic of being highly impatient, this impacts when searching, planning and solving a problem in which they are immersed and seek to bring about a significant change in their lives and communities. An impact that will have apparently positive results, but it is here that the lack of good planning and a good projection of the future can jeopardize the social project and may even leave people who depended on it helpless.
It is of utmost importance to consider that social enterprises must generate a certain profit in order to sustain the project and generate a greater impact over time. Ashoka's labor stresses this point, stating that a traditional business entrepreneur is not in contention with a social one; in fact, today there must be a convergence between the two notions.
In countries like Mexico, social entrepreneurship most of the time arises from people who have some need in their communities and who have the courage to act on this due to the inefficient response by the government.
Social Business Opportunities
Mexico has around 250 microfinance institutions whose target market is to give loans to people who are at the base of the country's economic pyramid and, together with these institutions, also the industries of housing, health, education and even energy. They have joined in supporting this part of the population, which represents just over a third of it and which could reach a high potential if they are supported.
Today not only Mexico but the world is moving and the social part in a few decades will cease to be irrelevant to become an industry that moves millions of people.
Belén Gómez Pereira. (2014). Social entrepreneurs, the future of Mexico. October 29, 2018, from Entrepreneur Website:
