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Banpu Hosts “Impact Day 2021 – Dare for Better Change”, Empowering Social Enterprises & Encouraging Consumers to Create Changes and Revealing 5 Winners of the 10th Banpu Champions for Change

Banpu Hosts “Impact Day 2021 – Dare for Better Change”, Empowering Social Enterprises & Encouraging Consumers to Create Changes and Revealing 5 Winners of the 10th Banpu Champions for Change

The 10th Banpu Champions for Change (BC4C) by Banpu Public Company Limited, an international versatile energy provider, together with ChangeFusion, a non-profit institution under the Thai Rural Reconstruction Movement Foundation, hosted “Impact Day 2021 – Dare for Better Change”. This year, the event was organized as an online event with an aim to empower social enterprises (SE) in Thailand to have a strong foundation and be ready to provide a positive impact to the society. The event was set as a learning space for people who are interested in social enterprises while inviting consumers to join and shop for products and services from the social enterprises in the BC4C network. This helped creating better change for society and the environment together as the belief that “Change can start from all of us!”.

Activities at the event included the announcement of the 5 winning teams of the 10th BC4C, as well as a special forum for entrepreneurs and people to share and learn about social enterprises. There was also “SE Marketplace” for social entrepreneurs to present and sell their products and services which, for the first time, was conducted through an online platform. There were more than 30 social enterprises participating in this marketplace.

Mr. Rattapon Sukhunthee, Head of Corporate Communications of Banpu Public Company Limited, said “Banpu has initiated the BC4C project since 2011. Now as we enter to 11th year of the project, we have provided support to over 100 social enterprises (SEs) since their inception. We also passed on the knowledge of doing business with ESG principles to new-gen entrepreneurs. Besides, in line with Banpu’s belief “Learning is the Power of Change and Development”, we encouraged them to apply the knowledge gained from the project for their businesses that are currently facing many challenges. It is important that the entrepreneurs need to be agile and resilient and develop themselves to the disruptive world. Moreover, they also commit their business goals in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this year, we have selected 5 finalists that had distinctive potential and were able to present outstanding ideas and business models which will bring about positive change to Thai society in various dimensions. We also go forward with this online Impact Day event as a stage for new-gen entrepreneurs to present their potential and as a learning space for those interested in SE businesses. We hope this event can create awareness among general public that we all can contribute the change to society and the environment, starting from ourselves first.”

Mr. Sunit Shrestha, Managing Director of ChangeFusion, said “Despite restrictions regarding    COVID-19 situation over the past two years, the BC4C project has continued to organize various activities, especially for this 10th generation of SEs throughout the year. The objective was to build an ecosystem that contributes to the growth of social enterprises. We put our focus on strengthening entrepreneurs who were participating in the project both in terms of initial funding support and knowledge that was very beneficial to them. We connected them to the network of BC4C alumni and experts in many fields were also invited to come together to share their knowledge in order to enable these new generation of social enterprises to grow up strongly.”

This year’s Impact Day is the first year that Banpu and ChangeFusion organized it in online format. There were many interesting activities such as a special forum on the topic of “Driving SE Society, Responding to the Challenging World”, presenting the business challenges during these two years, consumer trends and how entrepreneurs adapt to changes. And the last session, SE Marketplace offered the products and services from social enterprises in the project and networks in the form of an online market through a web application “gather.town”, providing opportunities for consumers to meet merchants directly.

For the 5 social enterprises selected as winners for the 10th Banpu Champions for Change project (in no particular order), they were the teams that committed to create a better change in different dimensions. Here they are:

  1. a-chieve HUB is a self-developed learning system designed to help secondary school students or equivalent analyze and get to know themselves better from their needs. The system helps increase decision-making skills so that students can choose the path that suits themselves in the future with confidence.
  2. insKru is an online platform to help teachers build the quality classrooms and create a safe environment for learning with library of ideas from teacher network, enabling with an assessing system which allows teachers hear the “voice” of students.
  3. Food Loss Food Waste starts from waste management in the community but extends its idea to the development of products which are produced from organic waste by using worms and insects in the degradation process. Then, they convert waste into environmentally friendly products such as fertilizers and animal feeds.
  4. Banana Land intends to develop communities “Baan Nong Bua”, Phu Hor Sub-District, Loei Province, to become a strong, sustainable and self-reliant community through trips organized for tourists to learn more about simple lifestyle of people in the community.
  5. Anywhere Work aims to create careers and develop digital skills such as digitization of documents and filling information to create AI technology for vulnerable workforce in order to provide them with better income and quality of life.

The 5 winning SEs will receive another stage of initial funding to support their business expansion totaling THB 1.25 million. They would also bring ideas, knowledge and experience gained from the project to develop and create concrete business growth while further create sustainable changes to society and environment.

For more details and latest update on Banpu Champions for Change project, please log on to www.facebook.com/banpuchampions

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About Banpu

Banpu Public Company Limited is a leading integrated energy solutions company with 3 core groups of businesses: energy resources, energy generation and energy technology in 10 countries — Thailand, Indonesia, China, Australia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Singapore, Japan, the United States of America and Vietnam.

“Learning is the Power of Change and Development”

Banpu believes that “learning” is an important foundation for the development of “people”, which will drive communities and society towards sustainable development in long term. Banpu’s CSR projects in all countries, therefore, focus on supporting and promoting continuous learning among young generations and communities in various forms, allowing them to learn from real experiences as much as from their daily lives inside and outside classrooms. They are encouraged to practice and develop their potential as well as life skills while always being curious to research, learn and discover knowledge on their own as much as with others.

About Banpu Champions for Change (BC4C)

The Banpu Champions for Change (BC4C) project is one of Banpu’s corporate social responsibility projects which started since 2011. The project was developed from another project called “Youth Innovation Marketplace” or “Yim (Smile)” project supported by Banpu since 2006. Banpu amplified it by giving support to young generations, having creative ideas and potential to make better changes to society through operating social enterprises (SE), which focus on the connection between business, society and the environment and also comply with moral and ethical principles in running their businesses.

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