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excessive that they gave up. Casa de Petisco Sam Meng Chi is
a sandwich shop run by the Macau As- sociation for the Mentally Handicapped that has been training mentally handi- capped people for the food and beverage industry for the past nine years. Social worker Grace Lau, who is in
charge of the project, says it is not a so- cial enterprise. “The government spon- sors 50 percent of our needs and we get the other 50 percent operating the store,” she says. The workers receive an allowance
of MOP600 per month and a MOP500 bonus, depending on their perform- ance, attitude, cooperation and attend- ance. “During these nine years, we have trained 46 people. Twenty-nine of them we helped get a job outside,” Ms Lau says. Asked why the project has not
evolved into a social enterprise, Ms Lau is candid: “We don’t have enough rev-
enue to cover the expenses and we can’t gure out a way to do it.” She says men- tally handicapped workers need special assistance, which makes the project’s costs higher than the cost of running a typical business.
Exemplary neighbour Cecilia Ho Wing Yin, a lecturer for the social work programme at the Polytech- nic Institute of Macau, believes the pau- city of social enterprises in Macau is due to the novelty of the idea, which leads to misconceptions; and to the amount of money the public and private sec- tors give associations to provide social services, which is a disincentive to the establishment of social enterprises that could provide similar services yet would have to survive in a more competitive environment. Ms Ho says the government should
do more to promote social enterprises, since they are particularly helpful to
disadvantaged people. She suggests that the government set up a committee to research and support the development of such enterprises.
It should provide
start-up funds to encourage individuals, charities and businesses to start their own social enterprises. In Hong Kong, the establishment in
2006 of a start-up fund has helped create 1,800 jobs by nancing more than 100 projects. However, some estimates indi- cate that only one in three of the social enterprises created currently thrives. A survey in 2010 by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Social Enterprises found that government-funded social en- terprises are the least pro table. Carlos Siu Lam, an associate profes-
sor at the Polytechnic Institute of Macau, says it is dif cult for social enterprises to generate enough revenue to survive. “Such organisations are ‘doing char- ity by doing trade’, rather than ‘doing charity while doing trade’,” he says.
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