JMI Pharmaceuticals Ltd yesterday inaugurated “E Medicare Tele Medicine Social Business Project” for providing low-cost medical services to people living in remote areas of Bangladesh as a social business.
SKS Foundation and Grameen Telecom Trust also signed a memorandum of understanding to set up SKS Social Business Project for expanding sheep rearing business by poor women in Gaibandha.
The launch of the projects came during the daylong seventh Social Business Design Lab at Yunus Centre in Dhaka, Yunus Centre said in a statement.
The Social Business Design Lab, which was chaired by Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, was divided in three major parts: social business project presentation, update of past social business projects and launch and signing of two social business projects.
Six new social business plans presented at the lab were: Coco-Pith Plastic Compound Industry of Bagerhat, Potential Advancement Network and Hub, Saiyada Krishi Farm, Social Business for Vulnerable Women in Rakibnagar Slums in Tangail, and Adarsha Livestock Farm.
Three of the projects were presented by young entrepreneurs coming from the families of Grameen Bank borrowers.
These business plans were then intensively discussed in six different groups. Each group came up with necessary recommendations.
Prof Yunus thanked the participants for coming up with innovative social business plans and encouraged the designers to implement the projects and for other participants to support them.
Tapan Chowdhury, a former adviser to a caretaker government; Abdullah Al Mahmud, chairman of Mahin Group; Mahmood Hasan, chief executive of Gono Shahajjo Shangstha; Mosharraf Hossain, country director of Action on Disability and Development, and Hasan M Mazumdar, country representative of the Asia Foundation, attended the event.
The Design Lab was live streamed through the internet. The next event will take place on September 14, 2013.
Source: The Daily Star
