Relevance – Region: Social enterprises have been facilitated and significantly grown both in scope and scale in many economies across the globe in the past time owing to its strengths in promoting “a novel strategy to solve social problems, create employment opportunities, ensure sustainable development, and alleviate poverty”[1] through the businesslike discipline. It is beneficial for all the economies since it helps boost sustainable economic development, address inclusive growth through creating jobs, redistributing income, hence narrowing the rich – poor gap in society. Given its potential contributions and developments in practice, social enterprises  is  of more attention a among APEC member economies.

In practice, they also face a great deal of challenges in various aspects such as legal, social, economic and governance that impede them from development. Since social enterprises aim at achieving social mission and more social benefits to the community while still be based on business model for profit and competition (Pomerants, 2003), their challenges are more than a conventional business that only focus on profit. Generally, there are not many concrete incentives specifically targeted at social enterprises from the Governments apart from incentives for SMEs if applicable. Social enterprises also encounter challenges such as lack of funding support, duality of mission, ability to scale up, lack of proper business strategy[2] among others.

In the APEC region, social enterprises are not prominent. It is recorded thate there are about 1,900 inclusive businesses operating in APEC economies, 61% of which are considered inclusive business activities and 24% of which are social enterprises initiatives[3]. The number of social enterprises might not be small but not large in investment size, estimated just about 2%[4],

In that sense, the project aims to making efforts in harnessing social enterprises through identifying  challenges, barriers that social enterprises encounter as well as  sharing experiences in how to address those various challenges, promote and develop social enterprises  from the perspectives of both regulators and enterprises themselves.  

Relevance – Eligibility and Fund Priorities: The project seeks funding from the General Project Account (GPA) and aligns with the priority “Women, SMEs, and Inclusive Growth”.

From the perspective that “social enterprises may be seen as an emergent and important segment of the SME sector” and therefore, play significant roles in providing the needed stimulus for the development of SMEs[5], through focusing on social enterprises, the project will not only echo efforts to promote SMEs development but also inclusive growth in APEC member economies in ways that it helps to address social issues, bridging the social and economic gaps, addressing poverty among others.

The women aspect will be also highlighted to figure out the women contribution as well as needed support for women in social enterprises since it is known that women play a significant role in SMEs development in general, and potentially in social enterprises as well.

Relevance – Capacity Building: The project aims to provide capacity building for APEC member economies through sharing experiences and practices in promoting social enterprises from two main perspectives: (i) government and local authorities to regulate, manage and supervise social enterprises; and (ii) social enterprises themselves on how to startup, survive and develop.