At the April 16 morning meeting of the Rotary Club of Hamilton AM the guest speaker was Benson Honig, the University Business Chair in Social Entrepreneurship at McMaster University.He is a Director at the Centre for Research on Community Oriented Entrepreneurship at the DeGroote School of Business.
He discussed his efforts to build entrepreneurship skills among disenfranchised communities in Brazil, Kenya, Poland and locally in Hamilton. He described a very interesting process where he was able to assess local need for services and technology needed to support small business entrepreneurs. He was then able to teach proper business practices that were more likely to produce success. He has developed a series of “case studies” that illustrate how progress can be made at the local level. He is currently building a cadre of “virtual mentors” who can be available to support projects anywhere in the world. A number of club members signed up to serve as virtual mentors, indicating their particular areas of expertise that can be called upon depending on local project need.
This is a unique, positive program that fits nicely with Rotary Internationals goals to support local communities and encourage involvement of Rotarians in world projects.
PHOTO: Benson Honig