Imagine young people from around the world learning and working together with local community to jointly improve the community’s welfare. Social Enterprise for Economic Development (SEED) program is an innovative learning approach fostering social sensitivity and social entrepreneurial leadership in a cross-cultural setting. This program is originated from the awareness of the importance of cross-cultural understanding in business and management practice and study nowadays.In this globalized era, business activityis going global, requiring people involved in it to overcome the existing cultural differences to achieve goal that they set up together.
Taking form of community development, SEED programs offers a form of cross-cultural management learning in real contexts, not just in simulation or case in classroom. This program involves students from Asian and European universities to jointly apply their knowledge for society. They meet, interact, and exchange ideas of each other. They learn experiences and cultures from each other. Furthermore, as a community development program, SEED program is designed so the participants can involve straightly in rural community’s life by living in the village, with the community in the community, seeing and understanding condition, potentials, and problems faced by the community in what is called as contextual research. As the results, the students are able to develop implementable innovative ideas that can help boosting the community’s economic development. Through that way, they learn from actual experience how to manage multi-cultural organization.
SEED program was initiated in July to August in Philippines and Malaysia and is held annually to ensure the sustainability of the community’s development. Currently, SEED program is being a joint program under the ASEAN Learning Network (ALN), that is South-East Asia universities? network that is committed to develop cross-cultural management science. Under the ALN, the idea of SEED program is spread out internationally. Nowadays, SEED program is also held in other country by university members of the ALN, such as in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei Darussalam with participants coming from various countries.
Cr. http://www.sbm.itb.ac.id/seed
Khanittha Yimlamai 1st edition student of Thaksin University in SEED 2014 program