SK fosters social enterprises, helps create jobs

As part of its efforts to fulfill its social responsibility, SK Group has provided systematic support for social enterprises based on its experience of creating social service jobs since 2005.

SK organized a division under its Happy Nanum Foundation last year to help develop business items for social enterprises using some 50 billion won ($42 million) in funds.

SK launched a website for networking among research institutes, social enterprises, nongovernmental organizations and the government in 2009. Winners of a contest for business items held on www.se-sang.com receive loans, management consulting services, training opportunities and marketing assistance in addition to prize money.

Through establishing and backing social enterprises, SK has created about 6,000 jobs between 2005 and 2010. 

SK founded eight social enterprises including four school foundations and is supporting 62 others.

The Happy School Foundations run after-school programs for schools in Seoul, Daegu, and Busan, and is preparing to do so in Ulsan next year.

SK also funded the Happy Library Foundation in cooperation with the Culture Ministry and the provincial government of Gyeonggi to support existing libraries in apartment complexes.

With the Ministry of Justice, SK funded a New Life Foundation to provide career training in areas such as coffee making, baking and laundering for former prisoners to keep them from going back to jail. The foundation also opened coffee shops and cleaning centers to hire them.

With SK affiliates such as SK Telecom and SK Innovation, the SK Happy Nanum Foundation launched organizations that help build IT infrastructure for small social enterprises, offer gardening services or free meals for undernourished children and low-income senior citizens.

It also established social enterprises that hire North Korean refugees and low-income earners to make boxes and environment-friendly blinds.

SK provides financial and strategic support for social enterprises that employ underprivileged people to produce leather goods, a theater that hires senior citizens, an electronics recycling center and a child care center for low-income families.

SK also runs a volunteer squad of some 280 SK staff with specific knowledge and expertise to offer advice on management strategy, marketing, public relations and IT systems to about 80 social enterprises.

Some volunteers have a knack for cooking or photography. The SK staff also use their skills to educate teenagers.

In addition to making financial investments in social enterprises, SK opened an academy for young people and the retired who wish to become social entrepreneurs.

SK also hosts a forum of social entrepreneurs and sends them abroad for study.

While fostering social enterprises at home, SK Group has led a range of philanthropic activities overseas, mostly in China, Vietnam and Mongolia.

SK Telecom has provided pro bono surgery for about 3,000 Vietnamese children with facial deformities since 1996. The mobile carrier has donated medical equipment to Vietnamese hospitals and funded Vietnamese doctors’ training in Korea.

SK Telecom has also donated books and supported remodeling of university and public libraries in Vietnam starting with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Polytechnic in 2006 and run an IT training center in Ho Chi Minh since 2007 to foster IT experts, some of whom worked as the company’s interns.

In China, SK has provided scholarships through a television quiz show since 2000, science education programs for middle and high schools, supported lectures on start-up ventures for college students, built primary schools in quake-stricken Sichuan province and in Urumqi in northwestern China, and funded forestation projects.

A team of college-student volunteers organized by SK Telecom have also carried out community work with local students in China and Vietnam.

In a Mongolian village, SK has supported livestock farms, offered mobile phones, educational programs and led a livestock leasing program for the residents.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)