China

Christmas is coming and the best way to celebrate on our blog is to give a big shout out to the wonderful social entrepreneurs and innovators we have met on our journey so far. We have collected gift ideas, events & initiatives and pieces of inspiration.

• Gift ideas with an impact

GOOD Travel membership
For someone who is passionate about travelling, what better gift than joining a community of like-minded people, all committed to having a 2018 full of sustainable and responsible tourism?
http://good-travel.org/holiday-gifts

Business Activist Entrepreneur Membership
For mission-driven entrepreneurs who want to know how to make money, provoke social change and have fun, this is the best offer available online:
https://www.overflowyourpossibility.com/membership
We attended their bootcamp in August, so we know what we are talking about!

Sheedo plantable item selection
Cotton-made paper cards, seeds, mini gardening kits… and 10% of Christmas sales will be used to plant trees: 
https://www.sheedo.es/mercadonavidad/ 

Advent Calendar by 24GoodDeeds
It might be a little late for this one but... who says that good deeds are only for the Christmas season? Check this out what Berlin Impact Hubbers have been doing, get inspired and take action: 
https://www.24-good-deeds.com/adventskalender/

If you are in Russia, Shapka Rulit [Creative Hats] is what you are looking for. Handmade by children and old people, fun and very warm: 
https://shapkarulit.ru/ 

If you are in Shanghai or wider China, Feyi collected the best ideas, ranging from the kit to be a perfect zero waster, upcycled bags, reusable paper gifts, homemade soaps or natural and vegan wine : 
http://www.feiy.co/articles/16 

If you are in the UK, the School for Social Entrepreneurs published an inspiring Christmas Shopping guide that is all about being sustainable with creativity at Christmas:
https://www.the-sse.org/blog/have-i-got-social-enterprise-news-for-you-christmas-shopping-bonanza-edition/ 

• Initiatives & events with an impact

Reverse calendar by Rubies in the Rubble 
Connecting food surplus with the people who need it most. They have been collecting one item each day since 1st December and adding it to the calendar. On Christmas Eve they will be donating it to their nearest food bank. 

24th December in Shanghai… time to celebrate!
Merry Christmas by Green Initiatives & partners.

24th December in Moscow… time to go green!
Day for separate waste collection by Delai Kulturu

Not Christmas-related but a wintery initiative which is simply beautiful:
Stenograffia run a project to make street art available and enjoyable for visually impaired people. A graffiti gallery made with Braille.
Pictures here and a video report here.

So… what are you doing for Christmas? Let us know in the boxes below!
 

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!

When we planned our trip, it was clear in our minds that we wanted to immerse ourselves in something different and wanted plunge into diversity. And we definitely succeeded!

Something different: 
We developed our itinerary choosing countries, and in fact a whole part of the world, that neither of us had visited before. Countries with a completely different history and culture from Italy’s and Europe’s. So different, indeed, that not only the languages there (here!) are different but the alphabets too! 
For people, like us, who are used to travel in Europe and in continents, like the Americas or Africa, where the writing culture has been introduced or formalised or taken on by Europeans, travelling across Asia is a completely different experience. Luckily, there is a translation function in WeChat and we had Google translator app to assist us :-)

Diversity: 
We travelled to Berlin, Germany; then Warsaw, Poland; then all the way across Russia from Moscow to Ulan Ude; then we moved south across Mongolia; and we continued across China, designing a circle (an “O”?!). Little by little, we got further and further away from our references. But the great thing was that all changed around us gradually. Including our references.

The transition from the Latin alphabet, used in Germany and Poland, to the Cyrillic alphabet, used in Russia,  is smooth - in both cases, there is one sign per sound and it is somehow easy to pick this up! 

In Mongolia, the Cyrillic alphabet, which was only introduced in 1944, cohabits with the traditional Mongolian alphabet. This is written in a top-down fashion with shapes that somehow reminded us of the Arabic writing. One of the highlights of our stay in Mongolia was the lesson we took from a ten-year-old school student on how to write that alphabet.

In China, everything changed. The writing is made of syllables, and syllables have a full meaning on their own. And each of the written sign is quite complex in itself. Once, we took one of our traditional photos with human bodies in sequence in the shape of ABCity.org (soon to be published in our Instagram, where you can find other ones!). We then suggested we would take a photo mimicking the Chinese name of the village… and our hosts said we should call up all of the villagers to make it right. The five of us were not enough people!

On ancient buildings, like those in the Forbidden City or Summer Palace in Beijing, we could still find Mongolian signs and decorative writing. We somehow felt at home!

When we got to Xiahé, Gansu province, we felt amazed by the transition from the Han village (where everything was in Chinese), to the Muslim village (where halal was rigorously written in Arabic!), to the Tibetan village. We only spent a couple of days there. Not enough time to learn much about Tibetan writing, but totally enough to admire the beauty and elegance of it. Written from left to right, letters are aligned on the top.

It has been a beautiful journey through differences and diversity so far. And it has been very rewarding to use these differences and diversity to start a dialogue with the inspiring people we met!

Any thoughts on writing, letters, alphabets, differences and dialogue? Just use the space below. We'd love to hear from you!