In Hong Kong, there are already knowledgeable, experienced and credible practitioners in the social innovation field. Engaging some of these as “intermediaries” will enable the Fund to leverage their experience and their networks to help find and nurture budding entrepreneurs who seek to innovate by integrating social impact into the businesses they create.
Four organisations, namely The Hong Kong Council of Social Service, PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited, SOW (Asia) Foundation Ltd*, and The Yeh Family Philanthropy Limited, have been engaged as the Fund's Intermediaries.
(*SOW (Asia) Foundation Limited completed its service as an intermediary of SIE Fund in August 2016.)
Collectively, the work of these intermediaries covers both the Fund’s priority objectives of Capacity Building and development of innovative projects in all four different stages (i.e. idea generation, prototype, start-up and scale-up).
Through the intermediaries, the SIE Fund has the vision to stimulate the ecosystem for social innovation in business through collaborative platforms that help generate, incubate and implement new businesses that help to address poverty and social exclusion. The SIE Fund targets to train and nurture 2700 or more potential social entrepreneurs, generate 700 or more ideas, and fund 100 or more projects through programmes administered by the intermediaries during the three-year engagement period. All targets have been achieved. The SIE Fund intends to engage a new batch of intermediaries in 2019 to take its work further. Their scope of work will cover the three priority action areas of Innovative Programmes, Capacity Building and Research.
Representatives of intermediaries share their views on SIE Fund and the development of the social innovation ecosystem:
- Hoi-wai Chua, CEO of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service
- K.K. Ling, Director of Design Institute for Social Innovation of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- Yvette Yeh Fung, Chair of The Yeh Family Philanthropy Limited
- Darius Yuen, Founder of SOW (Asia) Foundation Ltd
