Case study: Berkeley Oakland Support Services (BOSS) Berkeley Oakland Support Se
ID: 361176 • Letter: C
Question
Case study: Berkeley Oakland Support Services (BOSS) Berkeley Oakland Support Services (BOSS) was founded in Alameda County, California, in 1971 to provide a continuum of care from emergency shelter to transitional and permanent housing 1 BOSS recognized that employment was a key factor for successfully obtaining housing. In 1988 BOss began an employment program that counseled program participants on activities such as goal clarification resume preparation, job search techniques, confidence-building workshops, and individualized referrals and placements. The program was designed to assist clients in obtaining and keeping jobs and supported BOSS's own practice of hiring qualified program participants as paid staff. This employment support effort was expanded in 1991 to two new programs to employ program participants: one to clean streets and the other to remove graffiti. The programs provided homeless people with six-month paid training positions that would serve as stepping stones to other employment in the open market. Between 1991 and 1995 these programs were well received by both business and the City of Berkeley, which gave BOSS over $500,000 in contractsExplanation / Answer
Berkeley Oakland Support Services (BOSS), is now the name for the social entrepreneurship programs. BOSS identified the key pain areas of the city where it wanted to provide for the housing services and bring in affordability for the people. To provide the Purchasing Power to people and make them employable, they started the Development Programs.
Jobs getting started and they started to develop the enterprise where they kep the efficient people and who were able to run it. Thus they created value creation in the society for the upbringing of the bottomline people. They started paid programs for six months where the benefeciaries were the CIty, BOSS and society by again upgrading the hygiene level of city, creating employement opportunity and social development.
BOSS wanted to transform this model into profit earning enterprise which was their ultimate aim. We can say that they brought it the social innovation and driven it for few years so that Mission of Starting an Enterprise can be achieved which they did after all.
While they received the grand from City for maintaining the properties through already running model, they build a profit making model with the help of HEDF to become self-sufficient organization to run over a longer period of time with the grant money.
Thus with achievement of grant money, BOSS will run social entrepreneurship program as well as the Enterprise Program and strategically achieve their long term objectives by creating values for society, city and organization.