Four months into research and thinking, this is what has stood out so far:

• “If you don’t have a product or a service, don’t expect to be able to make a difference” – Ecosia Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll said this in one of his interviews; and it’s stuck in my head. What product or service do we have the skills to offer?
•  The Acumen course said that the birth of your social enterprise needs come from a combination of 1) the cause you care about + 2) what your passion is + 3) what skill you have to offer
• In my case that is 1) children’s education + 2) dance + 3) content – so doesn’t entirely work. However if I changed dance to writing, which I do love, there is a possibility there. The question now lies in the cause – being in Dubai, can we really impact children’s education in some way? I wrote about Action Care – so if I want to volunteer, there is a ready opportunity there.

There seem to be three key overarching ways to start your own social enterprise:

• Either you have an advocacy portal that spreads awareness and encourages public action
• You develop a product or service that directly helps your cause – that you can encourage people to use
• A combination of the two

Having said that, there are SO, SO many ways to make a difference, even if you don’t start your own thing. So, do we start our own thing or just start participate in other people’s things?

We have started participating in existing projects, continuing to do that while finding our own, is a pretty good medium.