Our Foundation was established in 2006 and its activities have been largely two-fold. One is educational & cultural project. It aims to provide opportunities for underprivileged youngsters with leadership & vocational training programs. And the other is social enterprise project. The Happiness Foundation is undoubtedly the most proactive foundation in Korea with regard to social ventures. We have received numerous business proposals from the public sector such as the Ministry of Employment & Labor, Ministry of Justice and the Municipal Education Commssions. In liaise with the government agencies, we have jointly set up 16 social enterprises and tried to maximize their synergetic effects with SK Group’s existing affiliated companies.
The Foundation not only manages social enterprises it has established, but also supports unaffiliated social ventures by advising on how to improve business models and giving them financial support. In addition, we envisage to facilitate the social enterprise ecosystem by educating social entrepreneurs, developing new business ideas, and creating an online information sharing platform. Impact investment is in line with such effort to foster a favorable environment for social ventures. We hope to create a virtuous cycle of cash flow by initially investing in social ventures that are at the stage of scaling up and the returns from those investments can be reinvested to enlarge the original pie of financial resources.