Can you make mon­ey, cure so­cial prob­lems and re­spect the plan­et all at the same time?

Sev­er­al busy bees think you can, and are run­ning work­shops on so­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship un­der the brand name Hive on Oc­to­ber 13 and 14. Hive seeks to "pol­li­nate eth­i­cal busi­ness." It launched last year, and this year has helped con­nect small start-up busi­ness­es in art, en­vi­ron­ment, food, ed­u­ca­tion and ad­ver­tis­ing. Its mis­sion is to bring to­geth­er so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs to de­vel­op sus­tain­able busi­ness­es. It now has its own on­line mag­a­zine, Hive, to be up­dat­ed month­ly and pub­lished quar­ter­ly on pa­per. The first print is­sue of Hive launched this month.

So what, ex­act­ly, is a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur? It's some­one who "bridges the gap be­tween the ef­fi­cien­cy of the cor­po­rate sec­tor and the in­ten­tions of the non-prof­it sec­tor," says the Hive mag­a­zine, cre­at­ed by SallyAnn Dal­la Cos­ta and Melv­ina Haz­ard.

So­cial en­tre­pre­neurs are in­di­vid­u­als who find out what's not work­ing, and seek out new, bet­ter ways of do­ing it, with­out wait­ing on gov­ern­ment hand­outs. They are of­ten small busi­ness own­ers who want to make more than just a dol­lar, they want to help peo­ple, "cre­ate so­cial val­ue" and im­prove the world.

"While a busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur might cre­ate en­tire­ly new in­dus­tries, a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur de­vel­ops in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to so­cial prob­lems and then im­ple­ments them on a large scale," ex­plains Ashoka, one of the largest net­works of so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs world­wide which has pro­vid­ed start-up fund­ing and pro­fes­sion­al sup­port ser­vices in more than 70 coun­tries. Ashoka was set up in 1980 by Bill Dray­ton.

Hive is a small, T&T ver­sion of this, and is linked to Dal­la Cos­ta's firm The Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Plat­form, which she runs from her cur­rent home base in Dubai. She is in T&T now to help raise the buzz about Hive ac­tiv­i­ties. Dal­la Cos­ta's Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Plat­form will be giv­ing work­shops on so­cial im­pact mea­sure­ment next week, along­side oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions.

The first Hive mag­a­zine is­suein­cludes sto­ries on:

�2 Chris­tine Souf­frant: She is an award-win­ning Hait­ian-Amer­i­can small busi­ness own­er. She be­gan by sell­ing Hait­ian street art in Man­hat­tam, NY flea mar­kets. She then opened a bou­tique shop (sup­port­ing her en­tire fam­i­ly, and the fam­i­lies of eight oth­er street ven­dors). Af­ter the 2010 earth­quake, she re­boot­ed her idea to an on­line sales plat­form whose goal is to sup­port the ven­dors and help them rise above pover­ty with men­tor­ship, fi­nan­cial train­ing and a glob­al con­sumer base (see http://vended­in­ter­na­tion­al.word­press.com).

�2 Racked: Lo­cal fash­ion and crafts event (next on is on Nov 9). Founders in­clude Em­ma His­cock and Ain Ear­le.

�2 Marielle Bar­row: She helps or­gan­ise art-based work­shops, per­for­mances and dis­cus­sions, and pub­lish­es Caribbean In Tran­sit mag­a­zine.

�2 Je­u­nanne Alkins: She is cre­ative di­rec­tor of Every­thing Slight Pep­per, which makes lo­cal­ly in­spired de­signs for chil­dren's clothes. She's al­so cre­at­ing a book set and an an­i­ma­tion se­ries for young chil­dren.

�2 Fi­nanc­ing: How to use part­ner­ships, phil­an­thropic groups and so­cial cause com­pe­ti­tions to fund your idea.

�2 The Agro­Cen­tral App: Con­ceived by young Ja­maican en­tre­pre­neurs Jer­maine Hen­ry, Jan­ice McLeod and Adri­an Thomp­son. The app dig­i­tal­ly con­nects farm­ers and co-ops sell­ing pro­duce with buy­ers such as restau­rants. Ac­cord­ing to Pat­ti-Anne Ali's sto­ry in Hive mag­a­zine, users can "find the lo­ca­tions of farm­ers, buy­ers, pre­vail­ing crop prices and da­ta on dis­eases and weath­er con­di­tions–all avail­able in one place, in re­al time."

�2 War­ren Cas­sell Jr: Talks about im­pact in­vest­ing by the pri­vate sec­tor.

�2 For a taste on the kind of peo­ple get­ting in­volved in Hive, see their mag­a­zine or check out their Face­book page: https://www.face­book.com/so­cia­len­ter­prise­hive

HIVE SES­SIONS

Oc­to­ber 13:

VENUE: Lok Jak Busi­ness School.

10 am: Talk by Denise Dem­ming on char­i­ty, so­cial jus­tice, sys­tems change and so­cial in­no­va­tion.

11 am: Talk by 15-year-old whiz kid War­ren Cas­sel Jr from Montser­rat on what in­vestors look for in a start-up.

6 pm: Dis­cus­sion on in­cu­bat­ing T&T's next gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness lead­ers, pan­el in­cludes the Bran­son Cete, ID­BIS, Start-Up Week­end, YBTT, Lok Jak Biz Boost­er, Christi­nee Souf­frant and An­tho­ny Hadeed.

Oc­to­ber 14:

VENUE: John D UTT cam­pus.

9 am: Re­place your busi­ness plan with a start-up can­vas, by Marielle Bar­row of Caribbean in Tran­sit (USA).

1 pm: Cod­ing for dum­mies with ro­bots by Daniel Ringis (T&T).

2 pm: Glob­al case stud­ies in de­sign­ing for good by Tena Pick (Dubai).

7 - 9 pm: At Na­pa the­atre: UTT an­i­ma­tion stu­dents fea­ture their one-minute protest an­i­ma­tion in the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

Con­tact: so­cia­len­ter­prise­hive.com or call 868-341-1885.