Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus opened the 12th Global Social Business Summit (GSBS) at the conference hall of Lavazza, the largest coffee company in the world, in Turin, Italy. The event is physically participated by about 500 delegates from 45 countries, from 50 social business organizations, universities including 300 social entrepreneurs across five continents with 150 other participants including political and business leaders, public and private sector scholars and institutional representatives. Another 1000 people will be participating remotely through online platforms.
The GSBS annually brings in global social business practitioners, advocates, academics, and institutions to one of the two biggest annual gatherings of social businesses.
Professor Yunus in his inaugural speech called for creating a world of three zeros, replacing the present money-making world. He elaborated on the concept “Three Zero World” in detail. This will be a world with zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration and zero unemployment.
Mayor of the City of Turin, Mr. Stefano Lo Russo in his welcome speech thanked organizers for choosing Turin, the historical capital of Unified Italy, as the venue of the GSBS 2022.
Secretary General of the Turin Chamber of Commerce Dr. Guido Bolatto; Francesco Profumo, President, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo; Giuseppe Lavazza, Vice President, Lavazza Group, Kate Robertson, Founder of One Young World and the Grand Duchess of Luxemburg Maria Teresa spoke at the opening ceremony emphasizing the need for social businesses across the economy to solve the problems created by the present economic framework.
This year the summit will showcase how the role of social business will lay the foundation of the culture of peace.
Discussions and activities of the Summit will focus on experiences centering around solutions promoting technology for the benefit of people while discarding technologies which is harmful to people, alleviating poverty, protecting the planet from destruction through global warming, urging academia to recognize the damages done by the institutions they conceptualized, and improve the practice of social business and examine the power of 3 Zero Clubs created by the young people across the globe.
The University of Turin co-hosted the Social Business Academia Forum (SBAF) with Yunus Centre on the first day.
This Summit is the first in-person gathering of social business activists, entrepreneurs, academicians, researchers, and students since the pandemic started in 2020.
The Global Social Business Summit is always designed as a very intensive two-day event leading to many new social business initiatives.
After arriving in Turin Professor Yunus was received by the founder of Sermig, Ernesto Olivero to meet the staff of Sermig to share the experiences of social businesses with them.
Sermig was founded in 1964 in Turin by Ernesto Olivero, his wife Maria Cerrato, and a few friends to defeat hunger and encourage dialogue, hospitality, and peace. They transformed a weapon-producing factory for the first and the second world war into a Factory of Love And Peace.
Sermig has provided shelter and food for over 130,000 homeless people, broken families and women from severe socio-economic conditions. They have served over 30 million meals.
The family owning the world’s largest coffee company hosted a family dinner in honor of Yunus. They were interested to see how they engaged themselves in social business.
After the Summit Professor Yunus will proceed to Colombia to visit several on-ground social businesses in Colombia and speak at several universities which host Yunus Social Business Centres and offer degrees and courses in social business.