Our purpose and vision
We are passionately committed to our purpose to dignify and honor the lives of entrepreneurs, especially women, in rural Cambodia by co creating the the environment to manifest their highest potential through the work they do.
We envision our village (Prey Theat, Takeo) to become a role model of a self sustainable community known for its highest quality hand crafted products using locally sourced and grown raw materials.
Our 10 year goal is to have this model to be adopted by 10 more villages across Cambodia. We will achieve this by actively sharing the success stories and knowledge of our entrepreneurs with other local change leaders from other villages in Cambodia. We will collaborate with forward thinking ethical businesses to expand the market reach to ensure long term sustainability.
How it started
Sonas was founded by two friends inspired by Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Mohammad Yunus who is known as the father of social business and for his work of transforming the lives of over 4 million people in Bangladesh. Sonas co-founder Keeva Murtagh is also one of the founding members of Yunus and Youth which inspires and mentors young social entrepreneurs around the world.
We are a social business.
Sonas is a social business focused on providing business support and education to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. It is our mission is to initiate mutual empowerment , promote progress and social development via Community Economic Development (CED) process. CED is a community-based and community-directed process that explicitly combines social and economic development and is directed towards fostering the economic, social, ecological and cultural well-being of communities and regions. We apply the 7 principles of social business outlined by Grameen in everything we do.
We believe that social entrepreneurship can empower people.
Investing in people, sharing our knowledge through mentorship and training and providing interest free seed capital can help establish sustainable micro businesses. It can empower people and create a big impact on the individuals who want to take responsibility for their future, alleviate poverty and improve the life of their family and community. Aside from training , we also want to inspire others by sharing their stories of determination in an empowered life . We believe by doing this, we can help spread happiness and inspire others to do the same. After all, happier people help build a happier communities.