The aim of this panel is to discuss how social businesses can bring about changes in access to education. Discussions will cover how institutions can apply the ideologies of social business to create graduates who are capable of solving problems of the future while utilizing the latest and updated technology.

Question: Should education create “job-ready” young people, or “life-ready” young people. What it means to be “life-ready”. Purpose of life. Discover the self. Unearth the limitless creative capacity in each young person.

Throughout the years, success in education has been defined by the narrow terms of attaining good grades and pursuing higher education, ultimately promising a successful career. However, this methodology has converse effects which damage work ethic and restricts a fulfilling and successful career by de-motivating students who fail to meet the thin criteria of academic success.

The speakers of this panel may discuss if the long-standing methods of education are still relevant in solving the problems of the contemporary world and if students are encouraged to become entrepreneurs or chase jobs. Is success in life narrated by academic success?

From “job-oriented” education shifting to “global-life-oriented” education. Making children aware of how people contributed in making the world a better place for future generations. And learn how they can do it themselves.

Speakers:

Cam Donaldson

Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice Principal (Research), Yunus Chair in Social Business & Health
Glasgow Caledonian University

Md. Nazrul Islam Asif

Professor, Department of Law
Dhaka University

Bordin Rassameethes

Director
YSBC Thailand @ Kasetsart University

Alejandro Mungaray-Lagarda

Co-ordinator
UABC Yunus Centre for Social Business and Wellbeing

Kieran Arasaratnam

Co-Director
Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation

Dato’ Seri Idris Jusoh

former Minister of Education
Ministry of Education, Malaysia.

This panel is designed to discuss the interactions and linkages between agriculture, the environment, and world hunger. Unsustainable agriculture poses as a large-scale threat to the environment and world hunger, and even agriculture itself.

Fertilizers used during crop production are one of the main factors that influence environmental damage, including fluctuations in the earth’s climate brought by increasing atmospheric concentrations of gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20) and depletion of the stratospheric ozone (03) layer caused by releases of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances. Machinery used in agriculture for fertilizer production, irrigation, food processing, and storage also consumes a significant amount of energy.

Population is increasing. Climate crisis is reducing cultivable land. Best use of land. Share land for food, and healthy air. Both necessary for life. Each country, each district, each community should do that. We should pay the countries who produce clean excess air.  

This session will cover how social businesses can harness sustainable and responsible methods of agriculture and minimize environmental harm and ensure equal distribution of food on a local, regional and global level. In retrospect, only social businesses can be implemented in the agriculture context given the limited scope of anything remotely profit related. Another important matter of discussion for the panel is whether the global food system will be able to adapt to the environmental changes. Examples of social businesses such as Grameen Euglena who are tackling malnutrition and hunger could be a driving force to push the idea of the importance of social business in the agriculture sector.

Speakers:

Aarti Wig

Co-Founder & Country Director
Yunus Social Business India

Eric Campos

Managing Director
Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation

Yukoh Satake

Co-Chief Executive Officer
Grameen Euglena

Aziz Elbehri

Senior Economist
Development & Policy Support Group, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Thailand

Richard T. Tugume

Country & Investment Director
YSB Uganda

Chien-wen Mark Shen

Director, Yunus Social Business Centre & Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration
National Central University

Farid Uddin Ahmed

Executive Director
Arannayk Foundation

This panel is designed to discuss the importance of corporate action tanks in social business. It will provide insight on how large corporations can support social projects, adopt social business policies and invest in social businesses through corporate action tanks. Large corporations can make huge contributions in the world of social business. Corporate Action Tanks can act as a springboard for these corporations to engage and work together to address diverse social problems by creating various social business ventures. Corporate action tanks help in making connections and deepening partnerships. It may draw the attention to making the future character of business should be of the form dual business - each profit-maximizing business must create a social business as a parallel business to the world sustainable socially and environmentally.

This will be the concept of corporates. Corporates should be created in pairs, like twins, corporate for profit-maximizing and corporate for social benefit maximizing. CSR is a small beginning. It has to be formalized into a dual corporate system.  

Speakers:

Jacques Berger

Managing Director
Action Tank and Social Business at HEC

Seema Bansal

Director
The Boston Consulting Group, New Delhi office

Mitsuru Izumo

Founder and CEO
euglena Co., Ltd.

Pipat Yodprudtikan

Chairman
Thaipat Institute

Hiroshi Osaki

Chairman and CEO
Yoshimoto Kogyo Co. Ltd

Marie Soubeiran

Communication & Employee Engagement Manager
Danone Communities

This panel will focus on how social businesses can be made powerful through application of science and technology. Using innovative approaches to tackle social problems has always been a key objective for social entrepreneurs. Technology and science, which are inherently innovative, will continue to play a significant role in building and improving social businesses.

Technology is a blessing, as well as a curse. Technology can produce massive unemployment through artificial intelligence, creating massive poverty by concentrating in production without human involvements, producing technology like plastic to threaten the existence of the existing eco-system.

Technology for blessing has to get the sole attention. Healthcare, Agriculture, financing the unreached, making the physically and mentally handicapped people self-reliant.

We need to find a way to protect human beings and the planet from the destructive curse of technology. The speakers of this panel will explore the possibilities of the development of socially driven technology in place of developing greed and military driven technology.

Speakers:

Faiz Shah

Head of Development Management
Asian Institute of Technology

Aziz Akgül

Founder and Chairman
Turkish Grameen Microfinance Program

Nazneen Sultana

Managing Director
Grameen Communications

Narayan Sundararajan

Chief Technology Officer
Grameen Intel

Sam Ro

Associate Teaching Professor
UM-SJTU Joint Institute

Tutan Ahmed

Assistant Professor
IIT Kharagpur

Sohel Ahmed

Managing Director
Grameen Shakti

This panel will discuss the current generation’s entrepreneurial abilities. The youth today are the most powerful of all generations as they are equipped with technology that did not exist before. They are the driving force of the world with their immense potential. They have immeasurable creativity and energy that can be harnessed into innovative business ideas and effective work ethics. With guidance in the right direction, the youth can turn unemployment into entrepreneurship. They start with and stay with their own drive and a unique vision. They use their personal passion to find ways to contribute to the world. There are hundreds of thousands of them finding their way in the new, seemingly barren job wilderness.

Young people today are the most powerful generation in history. They should be made aware of it. They should ask themselves the question: What use do we make this unbelievable power for? Should we make ourselves.

Speakers:

Christian Vanizette

Co-Founder
Makesense.org

Nurfarini Daing

Chief Executive Officer
Youth Trust Foundation

Shazeeb Khairul Islam

Founder & Managing Director
YY Goshti

Alex Wang

Founder and Secretary-General
Youthink Center in China

Dwiti Vikramaditya

Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS)

Callum Mackenzie

Program Manager
Yunus Centre @ AIT

This panel will feature global microfinance leaders, who will review the global state of affairs of microfinance as social business. Microfinance provides a path for the poor to grow out of poverty by taking small loans. Microfinance promotes entrepreneurship and empowers both women and men. This session will discuss the importance of refocusing efforts to adhere to the true social mission, which has been well established by Grameen Bank. This session will shed light on the impacts, challenges, and the future of microfinance as social business.

Wide range of service to be provided by microfinance organizations, Insurance, pension fund, Savings, housing, education equity, venture capital, loan guarantee and every other service that is available to the rich. Legislation for creating Bank for the Poor as a social business. Building strong community of social business microfinance. Technology, entrepreneurship for the unemployed.

Speakers:

Shankar Man Shrestha

Chairman
Centre for Self-Help Department

Zahirul Alam

Founder & Executive Director
Integrated Development Foundation

Alex Counts

Founder
Grameen Foundation

Corazon Henares

Deputy Director of Operations
Negros Women for Tomorrow

Ratan Kumar Nag

Managing Director
Grameen Shakti Samajik Byabosha Ltd.

Thisana Thitisakdiskul

Chief Executive Officer
Noburo

Sukor Kasim

Head of YSBC
Albukhary International University

Social businesses and young entrepreneurs have the potential to build social capital and provide sustainable solutions to complex problems – like poor accessibility to nutrition. The aim of this panel will be to discuss the problems that arise due to lack of healthcare and nutrition and how these problems can be solved. Healthcare could be a massive opportunity in the realm of social business and could speed up the overall social movement.

One of the prime examples of addressing nutritional issues through social business is Grameen Danone. Grameen Danone produces enriched yoghurt that is designed to provide many key nutrients to children in Bangladesh, which are generally missing from their diet. Another notable example would be Grameen Kalyan. It operates with the vision that without improvement in healthcare, the poor cannot stay out of poverty for long. Microcredit can bring them out of poverty but to keep them out of poverty permanently, healthcare for the poor must be addressed.

Finally, the exciting project called Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing will be discussed. The college serves to benefit girls as recipients of healthcare education, and position them as the major healthcare workforce of the future. It addresses the shortage of nurses through world class teaching techniques. The Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing runs as a sustainable social business. This example is transferable to other locations with nurses as key players in providing rural health care.

Other issues which will be discussed are: housing, sanitation, water, pollution, protecting from infectious diseases, taking care of the first 1000 days of babies, aging, physically and mentally handicapped.

Speakers:

Imamus Sultan

Managing Director
Grameen Kalyan

Anna Perenic

Managing Director
Grameen Danone Foods Limited

Kishwar Imdad

Managing Director
Grameen Healthcare Services Ltd

Ashir Ahmed

Director
Global Communication Center, Grameen Communications

Niru Shamsun Nahar

Vice Principal
Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing

Poonchai Chitanuntavitaya

Chief Marketing Officer
Social Health Enterprise

The aim of this panel is to explore funding opportunities for social business startups. Financing a social business can be a difficult challenge. This panel will provide tips for fund creation, as well as supporting and building social businesses. This session will also help the social business entrepreneurs learn how and where to look for funding, and motivate investors to start their own social business funds.

Discussion will include equity financing, social business venture capital, loan guarantee, crowdfunding, and other innovative social business financing mechanisms.

Speakers:

Suresh K Krishna

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Yunus Social Business Fund Bengaluru

Masaharu Okada

Executive Director
Yunus & Shiiki Social Business Research Center

Steve Hollingworth

President & Chief Executive Officer
Grameen Foundation

Enzo Cursio

Coordinator
UN-FAO Nobel Alliance for Food Security & Peace

M. Shahjahan

Advisor to Chairman
Yunus Center

Claire Lyons

Senior Manager of Sector Engagement, Global Impact Department
Water.org

Art and culture are an important part of everyone’s lives, but most often we do not realize just how much culture and art influence our lives. In fact, many grow to be the people that they are based upon the art and culture that they’re exposed to as children and as young adults. Arts and culture organizations have power to impact positive social change on people and communities. These organizations can harness it’s resources to strive for social impact by creating social businesses to make them sustainable and replicable.

This panel will discuss how we utilize the power of arts and culture to solve social issues and increase awareness of social problems. It will encourage leaders of arts and culture to focus on their creative powers to generate ideas and come up with solutions to a myriad of social problems.

They may promote the culture of living together, sharing life, promote leadership and creativity, build peace among all segments of human community, let the distances on the basis of religion, caste, ethnic origin, colour of skin, gender, education, physical condition, privileges, and wealth disappear.

Speakers:

Monica Yunus

Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Sing for Hope

Tahsan Khan

Singer-Songwriter & Actor

James Chau

Host, The China Current with James Chau
China Central Television

K – Von

Comedian

Camille Zamora

Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Sing for Hope

Tongjai Thanachanan

Managing Director
C Asean

Paola Samoggia

Composer