By: Dr Francois Bonnici
Meet Dr Francois Bonnici, a medical doctor by training and Head of Africa and Middle East for the Schwab Foundation by passion.
The Schwab Foundation’s mission is to raise global awareness around social entrepreneurship as a key element to advance societies and address social challenges in an innovative and effective manner.
What Schwab does is to identify the most promising models of social entrepreneurship and provide a regional and global platform (through the World Economic Forum) for leading social entrepreneurs to highlight and disseminate their sustainable social innovations.
Being a medical doctor helps me to have insight into the real daily challenges of 4 billion people on the planet who aren’t reading this. It reminds me that the social enterprise movement is all about people (and the planet).
I believe that “We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities that are brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems” (John W Gardner)
Social innovation is a new term but an old phenomenon. It can refer to the processes that broadly encompass all the phases from conception to outcome for new products, services, practices and strategies that address social challenges.
The biggest challenge I face is not quitting my job and working directly in the organisations of social entrepreneurs – and realising that people do need to facilitate the emergence of social enterprise in South Africa.
My day is filled with joy and frustration. Joy in engaging with inspiring social innovators, and frustration that we can’t help them fast enough.
It is important to contest the association of “innovation” with “invention” alone because the term often also encompasses both technological innovation (eg for enabling access to healthcare) and social innovation (eg management of resources, organisation of systems, stakeholder involvement) as key strategies to improve social and environmental outcomes.
The exciting thing about social innovation is that it represents the experiment and breeding ground for the longer term successful approaches to our national and social challenges. The new effective approaches are less likely to be created at a policy level before it has been tried and proven in communities or in initiatives.
The best part of my job is being on the bleeding edge of social innovation globally – seeing the most effective models of social change, many of which can be successfully adapted and implemented in South Africa.
South Africa could do with more young leaders with integrity who stand up for what they believe in. SA could also do with more coordinated efforts in education and health from civil society, corporate action in communities and government programmes. If the multiple efforts by these sectors worked to align themselves in a more strategic approach, we might see real improvements much faster.
If I were president, my top priority would be education, education, education – from pre-primary to adult education.