SEDPI President and CEO Mariel Vincent Rapisura shared the Philippine experience and recent initiatives on social entrepreneurship during the Scientific Conference on Social Enterprise Development held on April 9, 2012 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The National Economics University in partnership with the British Council Vietnam organized the conference. It attracted more than 100 academicians from various Vietnamese universities and practitioners in the field of social entrepreneurship.
The conference aims to raise the awareness of faculty members in various universities in Vietnam as regards social entrepreneurship and to inspire them to develop curricula to support local enterprise development. The event brought together experts from the United Kingdom, United States, and the Philippines as well as practitioners and researchers from Vietnam. They tackled key challenges and opportunities social enterprises face.
PGS. TS. Bui Anh Tuan, Vice President of the Ministry of Education and Training in Vietnam, and Michael Gordon, Deputy Director of the British Council Vietnam delivered keynote speeches highlighting the role of the academe and the private sector in social enterprise development. As a response, TS. Nguyen Van Tien, Vice Chair of the Community of Social Issues of the Vietnam Assembly (Quoc Hoi) spoke about the role of the government and the importance of synergistic relationships in this field.
Among those who shared their insights and experiences during the conference were ThS. Luu Minh Durc (Researcher at the Department of Business Environment of Central Institute for Economic Management), Ba Pham Kieu Oanh (Executive Director of the Center for Social Initiatives Promotion), Gladius Koluthungan (Professor at the University of East London), and Michael Goldberg (Professor at the Case Western Reserve University in the US).