Social Business Day, June 28

Hey people, it's Social Business Day! Bangladesh celebrates it.. do you?


In honor of the first annual Social Business Day, Bangladesh leading English paper The Daily Star interviewed Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner (2006) and founder of Grameen Bank. What's significant about this article is not its content or quality, but that it exists at all.

Like many of the achievements in social enterprise in Bangladesh, Social Business Day owes its existence to Prof. Yunus. According to the Yunus Centre:

Social Business Day will:
· encourage the participants to discuss the critical features of social business, merits, achievements, and challenges of social businesses
· discuss the plans for upcoming social businesses
· explore future social business opportunities, and
· inspire individuals, entrepreneurs, students, foundations, and companies to create their own social businesses

So get out there and celebrate! I really hope Social Business Day reaches its first birthday.

I still remember the first time I heard Yunus speak. I was in the car driving home from my Fortune 500 company job, stuck in the parking lot know as the Capital Beltway. I was listening to the radio... I suppose it must have been NPR, though I should clarify that I'm not one of those enlightened people who chooses NPR over talk radio or top 40.. I'm really not. I just sort of ended up on the station just when they were interviewing Yunus about his book.

Mostly I was bored and daydreaming, but at some point the words coming out of the dashboard managed to push their way through the cloudy fog of happy hours and weekend plans that made up 80% of my after-work brain activity and sink in.

I remember sitting up, stick straight, and listening intently.. I think I scrawled "Yunus" and "Grameen" on the palm of my hand (the gentlewoman's notepad).
And that was the moment my life changed..

Just kidding.

Actually I think I forgot about it, but you know how life has a way of shoving the same thing in your face, over and over, until you take proper note of it? Well, that is what happened. And here I am, working on a social enterprise in Bangladesh! Funny thing, life.