Food

Can you think of a better way to end your trip and exploration than giving a talk about your experience and learnings? We couldn't. When we realised that we could have this opportunity, we got super-excited, shafted plans around and got all sorted for our speech at the Fresh Start Rotary Club.

We will not repeat here what we said last Friday. There will be other opportunities for this:

• Specific blog posts on social impact per country (coming up in January, so watch this space!);
• A photo gallery of the social entrepreneurs and innovators we have met;
• The documentary we are working on; and 
• (we hope!) Other speeches!
   

But we thought we should share some of the questions we were asked at the end and our answers:
 

1. How have you found and selected the social enterprises and initiatives you visited during your journey?
   
   First, research on the internet during the months before the trip. Then word of mouth, both at a distance and in country - for example through the Impact Hub network. Two directories were also very helpful - one in Russia and one in China. And this website is full of inspiring social enterprises too!
   
    
2. What are the main causes social entrepreneurs are trying to tackle? Did you see any pattern?
   
   Our exploration focussed on three main areas: radical food, urban innovation and sport for transport. So most of the initiatives we visited work in these sectors. However, these are mainly our own interest areas, not really patterns that we could identify. Among these three sectors, it is true that we have seen more initiatives around food than on the other topics.
   
    
3. Did you ever felt that some causes are more important than others? Or that people are doing what they do because of their own interest and not for the cause?
   
   No, it's all about their passion. The people we met do what they do because they believe it is important. In some (perhaps most) cases, they are still ‘struggling’ in making their initiatives financially viable. Of course, social entrepreneurs want to make a living out of their businesses. But profit was not the motivating factor among those we interviewed. Plus, except the SocEnt we interviewed in Germany and the U.K., they receive no recognition from the government, so no tax release for example.
   
    
4. You mentioned the story of a social enterprise that was shut by government’s decision in Russia. This could happen in China too. What should be done in contexts where governments are not always supportive? What should the role of the Government be?
   
   This is a tricky question. We would go with a politically correct answer ;-)
   The legal and political environment is obviously an important influencing factor for any type of business to succeed. When the government supports social entrepreneurship, financial viability can be reached earlier and in an easier way. However, the social innovators we saw social innovators that did not give up in spite of their struggle. The ones behind the story you refer to opened a new social enterprise after their first one got shut down. Determination is crucial to make the world a better place and… lead by example!
   
    
5. In some cases, social enterprises now play the role that used to belong to religious organisations. Do you agree? Have you witnessed any of this?
   
   We have not… but this is an interesting question! In fact, we found it hard to speak about religion most of the time as if people were in denial of such a thing as ‘religion’. We think this is due to the recent history of the countries we have visited and the communist approach to religion. Instead, we were under the impression that social enterprises are coming in to fill gaps left by the state in countries where the state used to provide to society more than what it is now.
   
    
6. What was the most unexpected thing during your journey?
   
   Packing ‘eco-rice’ until late at night to help our hosts in the middle of the most rural China!
   Afterthought (not shared at the event but worth mentioning here): doing an interview via WeChat using the ‘translate’ function. That was brilliant!
   
    
7. What is coming next?
   
   Three main plans:
   • Sharing our learning more and more widely!
   • Keeping in touch with all the social entrepreneurs and social innovators we met, and providing services to them. We are developing a series of webinars with one of them, working on the visual identity of a couple of others. We are post-producing photos that we took to help their marketing activities, etc.
   • Developing our own products to tackle issues that we think should be solved. We have an idea related to eco-friendly transportation - as travellers, it’s pretty much obvious! And we are working on a website hosting service powered by green energy. We have introduced this in Italy a few months ago and are planning to scale it up!

We’ll be in Myanmar next year… and very keen to see what will happen there!

Were you at the Fresh Start Rotary on 1st December? Is there anything we have forgotten? 
Were you not there? Does anything of the above resonate with your experience of social entrepreneurship?
Please use the comments below!

The World Food Day is a day to celebrate food, its value, its worth. It's also a day to remember that not everybody can afford to eat well or even eat enough. And a day to reflect on food and its impact on everybody’s life. For this reason, we decided that it was a good time to write about our vegan choice.

Why are we vegan in our lives and in our travelling?!

Immediate answer: because we like making things complicated :)

We have been vegan for a few years now and have travelled to three and a half continents. If we said that travelling like vegans is easy, we would lie. It requires discipline - to check all labels and “question” all dishes, consistency - to make sure that veganism does not hinder our support to local economy and does not offend the people we meet, and some form of abstention - to give up on many new things that are thrown our way when exploring new places, new countries, new cuisines.

So, seriously, why are we vegan?

1. Because we think it's good for the people and for the planet - and those who are familiar with our project know. It's good for our health and for the earth. We have experienced this in our lives and it is well-known that livestock is a major cause for pollution and global warming.

2. Because local cuisine often offers vegan options or recipes that can be easily ‘veganised’ without necessarily knowing it. Again, life experience showed it to us - at our wedding, we had only vegan food and 80% was from Italian traditional cuisine ;) (the remaining 20% was creatively made by our catering service so, in a sense, also pretty local!). On our first evening in Russia, we were traditionally welcomed by our hosts with a (meat-free) borscht. Two days after, at Xachapuria restaurant, the waiter decided that it could a good idea to veganise pirozhki and lobiani… and the chef agreed!

3. Because it's actually good fun to inspect every single label of the food one buys! Try to imagine the 2 of us armed with our Google Translator app verifying labels in Cyrillic. Or imagine us asking supermarket personnel or passers-by typed-up questions on the app ;) It's an opportunity to meet people and… to learn some vocabulary and a new alphabet. I'm pretty proud of the level of my Russian reading skills after only one week in this country!
   
   

4. Because the Travelling “Spirit” knows best. When travelling, if you follow the way, good things (which are often the 'right' things for you) will come to you. El camino se hace al andar (A. Machado). And this applies to food practices too. For example, last week, our train to Moscow got cancelled and we found ourselves in Poland without any planned accommodation. We launched an appeal on Couchsurfing and the one who responded turned out to be vegan! So when the food was ready, nobody got offended because we don't eat meat, fish, cheese, etc. ;)

Convinced? Travelling like vegan is possible, is fun and, we think, is good. What do you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts - the comment box below is the for this!

Food is one of the 3 areas we are exploring and researching on, along with urban innovation and movement sports.

Why food? Food is something that everybody needs but nearly 800 million people in the world are in hunger and around 1.3 billion tonnes of food go wasted every year.

This means that there is a lot to do about how food is produced, distributed and consumed!

At the Profit with Purpose event we attended last Wednesday at the Business and IP Centre in London, four social enterprises that work with food shared their stories and their advice @HarrySpecters @rubiesinrubble @ChangePlease @TooGoodToGo_UK

Here are some of our thoughts.

4 things to have to set up a business that makes profit with a purpose:

1. A good idea and a strong message to go with it

2. Passion for what you do and why you are doing it

3. A product or a service that you will test, improve, refine and make it love by your customers

4. A supportive network including family members to give you good recipes or smart ideas for a name, your friends to test your products and provide feedback, partners with different expertise, mentors to help you build your skills and have a sounding board, etc.

4 things to remember in the journey to social entrepreneurship

1. Start small, dream big. You can start from your backyard room and dream you’ll become a franchise all across the UK (and beyond) .like

2. Know your customers and your competitors. The market will lead or hinder your growth. Apps like Smaply and Experience Fellow can be really helpful for this.

3. Work step by step. Don’t over-think what you're doing in a way that puts you off. Try, test, fail, learn and make it better. Then move to the next step.

4. Be prepared to work hard but do look after yourself!

4 things we really liked from the four social enterprises

1. Coherence. Prices on Too Good to Go app are capped. This way businesses are discouraged to produce food with the aim to end up in the platform. The aim is to reduce food excess, not to provide another food delivery app.

2. Closing the loop. Rubies in the Rubble collects apples and bananas that would be thrown away each week from Virgin train’s catering service, turns them into jam or ketchup and sells the end product back to the company.

3. Onward-thinking. Please Change provides homeless with training and an opportunity to work as baristas at London living wage - which is already commendable. They also provide housing, a bank account and support to access further employment after their six-month programme.

4. Social Investment. Harry Specters invests 60 per cent of their profit to further the social aims of the business, and to provide social activities and opportunities for personal development for their young employees with Autism.

1 conclusion

Profit with a purpose makes economic and social impact, can go to scale and can be fun :)

How beautiful is this?

If you run a social enterprise that works with food, we'd love to learn from you!

If you run a social enterprise that works with food in Russia, Mongolia, China, Nepal or Myanmar, we'd love to visit you :)

PS: the two bottles that you see in the picture were super kindly offered to us by Julian, Managing Director at Lemonaid Beverages Ltd, another socially-minded business that we had the chance to meet at the event. Thanks, Julian :)