The business of doing good
Young female social entrepreneurs share why Malaysia is one of the best places in the world to grow their careers.
CHIA Wen Shin, 25, has turned helping the environment into a business.
She runs an organisation – Greenyards – almost single-handedly, collecting disposed cooking oil and recycling them into candles, bar soap and washing powder, which are then sold online and in a physical store.
Chia is just one of the growing number of young Malaysian women making their mark in the social enterprise sector. And as it turns out, our country is one of the best places to do so.
A 2016 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll showed that Malaysia is the fifth best country to be a female social entrepreneur, beating 40 other countries including Japan, China and Australia. Malaysia also made top 10 in the list of social entrepreneurs overall.
Chia highlighted the country’s multiracial community as one of the factors that have made it easier for female social entrepreneurs to bloom.
“When you stay in a multiracial country, you need to understand and respect different cultures and backgrounds, which is what makes us tolerate and help each other,” she reasoned. “That’s why we pay more attention to social causes.”
Social enterprises measure success through financial gains and social impact.
A 2013 report by the Harvard Business School quoted US surveys that found women to place more emphasis on social values than men, which makes them perfectly suited for the industry.
Chia, for example, started her research on recycling cooking oil as part of her environmental science degree three years ago.
The findings and her passion for saving the environment stayed with her, even after she started working at a multinational company. Eventually, she quit her job to follow her dream – to turn cooking waste into something usable and eco-friendly.
“I wanted to create a sustainable business and help the environment at the same time,” she enthused. It’s this merging of business sense and do-good attitudes that has spurred the social entrepreneurship industry onwards, she added.
“We all have our own causes, but we also want to succeed with our personal goals, career-wise.”
Helpful Malaysians
For social entrepreneurs like Chia, the local scene is a goldmine – both in terms of consumers and causes to champion.
“There is a demand for social enterprises in Malaysia, because we have plenty of people who need help,” said Nur Azlyn Abu Bakar, 27, co-founder of Rocka Atelier.
Rocka Atelier started as an initiative to give underprivileged women an opportunity to enter the fashion industry by teaching them marketable skills such as business and ICT training.
They are also trained in sewing to produce fashionable modest clothing – all designed by Azlyn herself.
At the end of the year, the enterprise, which is managed by Azlyn and her two sisters, produce a social impact report to share how much their customers have helped by buying the products.
Azlyn, whose idea for Rocka Atelier was inspired by US-based ethical fashion movement Raven + Lily, credits her mum as a role model.
“My sisters and I grew up seeing our mum doing volunteer work,” she said with a fond smile. “She taught us the saying ‘If you teach a woman, you teach the nation.’”
What glass ceiling?
The way the social entrepreneurship industry is set up makes it less likely to be biased against age or gender.
According to a 2015 study by the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC), a government organisation in charge of empowering the entrepreneurial sector in the country, 64% of Malaysian social enterprises are headed by leaders under the age of 40. Also, the largest proportion of social entrepreneurs are between the ages of 21 and 30.
Globalisation and easy accessibility to information in Malaysia allow young people to be great social entrepreneurs, said Chia, who learnt about recycling cooking oil through the Internet. “Anyone can easily find information and opportunities out on the Internet,” she said.
Amelia Tan runs an Internetreliant social enterprise, 100% Project, which uses crowdfunding to fund classroom projects.
The idea for 100% Project came while she was working with Teach For Malaysia. She found that teachers in rural areas often wanted to organise fun projects or activities for their students, but often didn’t have the money to do it.