By Melissa Ip
A couple of French students Christian Vanizette and Romain Raguin are trying to put some sense into social business. Their movement "MakeSense" is an online platform that helps people to become social business rock stars. Across the world, users would organize meetups for their local area and engage offline.
Through MakeSense, the founders hope to "boost the impact of social entrepreneurs by connecting them with super cool individuals and enabling them to take up challenges." By nurturing collaboration, they hope their members - nicknamed the MakeSense Gang - will take on the mission to tackle issues in society with sustainable business models.
To date, over 500 people around the world have signed up on the website.
Some events are meet-and-greet while others are workshops that they call "Hold Ups". A couple of upcoming Hold Ups include a brainstorming session in Bristol on November 20 and a gathering at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford on November 27. Over in Kuala Lumpur, there will be a two-day SenseCamp in early December lined up with talks and workshops.
The open project started in February 2010 by Vanizette and Raguin on their trip to Asia to meet social entrepreneurs.
"We believe in the power of social entrepreneurship and social business to change the world. As a result, through our open project MakeSense, our objective is to accelerate the social impact of social entrepreneurs and help sustain this impact in time by promoting the social business concept."
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