Social entrepreneurship has grown significantly across Southeast Asia in recent years. We have seen the emergence of social entrepreneurs, who have stepped up to develop financially self-sustaining solutions to address social and environmental challenges in their communities. This rare breed of leader operates across the public, private and third sectors and balances the imperative of creating social impact with the need for financial sustainability.

Social enterprise is gaining ground in the Philippines. Anecdotal evidence from the emergence of social start-ups, incubators and accelerators and social finance prove this. Non-government organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) are also now looking at social enterprise as an organisational model to ensure longer term sustainability of their operations.To date, however, there is little quantitative evidence of social enterprises in the Philippines, including details about their operations and their impact.