BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 7. Azerbaijan has huge potential for development of social enterprises in the country, Lana Lovasic, international expert on social enterprises and social economy, told Trend.
“UNDP has mobilized international experience and used a kind of international network to provide examples of successful development of social enterprises, and then has helped facilitate this process of engagement and consultation in Azerbaijan to help find out, what the recommendations for policy should be. The UNDP has played the facilitation process here, making sure that the recommendations forwarded to the government are locally contextualized based on the real situation in Azerbaijan,” she said.
According to the expert, there is an equal importance of both ecosystems supporting social enterprises more broadly, and the policies provided.
“Both ecosystems and policies are important, and they can survive without each other, but it is better when they are aligned and work together. So, there is more than one way to achieve the desirable result. If, for example, there is no policy, but the ecosystem is good, meaning the network comes together and there is sufficient capacity building and finance, you can have progress. If policies are good, create incentives, funds, and provide support, the result can be effective as well,” she explained.
As Lovasic noted, social enterprises are not sector specific and can focus on all different kinds of products and services. For example, a business that recycles and reuses waste cooking oil, a cooperative that helps women earn livelihoods by helping them sew and sell clothes, or even non-profits that sell fair trade coffee to help develop farmers. These can all be social enterprises. They can operate in any area from IT to energy to education and have a wide variety of business models. Though they also often either target or include vulnerable groups.
“But, beyond this, what is very interesting, the global statistics show that social enterprises are usually run by women more than by men, and this seems to be the case in Azerbaijan as well,” she added.
Regarding the concept of corporate social responsibility, the expert noted that it usually refers to a traditional business, whether it is a corporate or a small business, which uses a small portion of their profit to engage in some kind of social or environmental work.
“For example, those could be such initiatives addressing the pollution issue or investing money in education. In some places this is required by law, in other places corporations do it because it is a social license - making sure that you are a good citizen, as a company,” Lovasic explained.
On the other hand, social enterprises are different because they
start from the impact, and making a difference - this is the core
of their activity, she said.
According to the expert, in Azerbaijan, the key recommendations for
social entrepreneurs vary by context, because the system here is at
an early stage.
“So, what needs to be done is education and awareness raising, helping people to understand the potential of this system, and then, the capacity building - trainings and programs, as well as funding,” she explained.
As Lovasic noted, after having the preliminary recommendations ready, it is up to the government and the local ecosystems to take these recommendations and apply.
“There is so much to be done, but even now, at an early stage, we found enterprises that are already doing well. Now we need to find more of them. There are enterprises operating that probably do not know even that they are in fact, social enterprises. This is about pulling them into the support ecosystem. If the government really puts a lot of efforts, and moves the policy forward rapidly, the ecosystem will come together and move quicker. Internal policy development needs to be conducted in the government and local ecosystems as well. There is a huge potential for this in Azerbaijan, and I really hope that this will develop quickly here,” she added.
Meanwhile, the presentation of policy recommendation for social enterprises in Azerbaijan was organized recently within the ‘Developing innovation-driven and sustainable civil society in Azerbaijan’ project, funded by the EU and implemented by UNDP. Since April 2022, regular workshops and meetings have been organized together with local entrepreneurs to discuss current landscape and their experiences for developing these recommendations.
The project aims to help increase capacities of civil society organizations to engage in policy-making processes, foster local development, and promote social entrepreneurship and social innovation.