İstanbul: creating a social entrepreneurship ecosystem
The 1st EuroAsia Social Business Forum- İstanbul will take place in İstanbul, Turkey on 23 May, to create a platform for knowledge transfer between Europe and Asia regarding social business
Over the last couple of years, social business has become an important component for capacity-building in business as well as in politics. Social business aims to create sustainable solutions to address social and environmental problems both locally and internationally.
On 23 May 2013 İstanbul will become social business capital. İstanbul will host the 1st EuroAsia Social Business Forum-İstanbul (EASBF ), a platform to favor knowledge transfer between Europe and Asia regarding Social Business and Social Innovation practice.
İstanbul, as it is the intersection of two civilizations, will become the hub between Europe and Asia for inclusion of people of both sides. The forum is called EuroAsia because İstanbul will bridge a world between Europe and Asia to transmit knowledge in social business.
The Forum aims to bring together like-minded people and organizations to help achieve scalable social impact through social business.
This event will be held every two years to create a sustainable eco-system of social businesses in the country. This year’s edition will be the first in a series of planned events that aim to bridge the gap that exists between Europe and Asia in how we spur business to action to support communities and to solve social problems.
The Forum will serve as the first step in fashioning a bond amongst entrepreneurs, social innovators and leading experts from corporations, civil society, governments and academia from Asia and Europe. Innovators will share their ground-breaking ideas in order to favor and facilitate a people-centric integration process.
The event will be divided in two parts:
-the plenary speakers sessions. Speakers include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and Her Majesty Queen Sophia of Spain.
– the workshops: a series of topic oriented, interactive sessions led by a group of selected innovators (EASBF Fellows) of the local eco-system. The purpose of these sessions is to work on challenges and identify opportunities as well as concrete recommendations related to the topic of the session.
The Forum will also raise awareness of the potential role that social business can play in the region and establish a knowledge exchange hub in Istanbul between EU and Turkey regarding Social Entrepreneurship.
Another objective of the Forum is to launch “The İstanbul Social Business Charter” signed by forum participants with an associated commitment to achieve at least one tangible social business outcome over the next twelve months by each participant.
The EuroAsia Social Business Forum has also launched the Social Business Idea Competition for young challengers, a competition created for young people in order for them to design creative social business solutions for the most pressing social problems in Turkey.
