Top Ten Ways to Get Involved with Social Entrepreneurship

I have recently read this article about “top ten ways to get involved with social entrepreneurship” it is written by Nathaniel Whittemore. He is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation. He is also the Founding Principle for Do Good Well, Inc, a consultancy focused on fusing business and philanthropy to advance social change. Most recently Nathaniel co-founded AssetMap.org, a web-based startup to help individuals and organizations better harness their assets for collaborative social change.

After I read the article, it encouraged me to explore more ways on how I can contribute not only to the economy but also to our countrymen. I didn’t realize that there are several ways to be a social entrepreneur and that it could start just by reading and educating yourself with it. I hope that when you do finish reading this article, you, would also be enlightened and TRY to make a change.

Top Ten Ways to Get Involved with Social Entrepreneurship
by Nathaniel Whittemore
Published October 05, 2008 @ 07:55PM PST

1. Read

Although the field is young, the excitement and passion of those involved has already begun to produce volumes of articles, books, and case studies that give you can help you understand the challenges and opportunities of social entrepreneurship to create change. “The Power of Unreasonable People,” by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan or “How to Change the World,” by David Bornstein are great starting points. For more, see our “Top 10 Social Entrepreneurship Reads”



2. Reach out to a social entrepreneur

Social entrepreneurs are people, just like you and me, who care deeply about an issue and have found a way to do something innovative about it. Most, if not all of them, remember the moments where they realized that they had to do something, and are excited to share their stories with up-and-coming change-makers. The internet has broken down the barriers to communication, so look ‘em up and reach out! Use this channel or www.socialedge.org to figure out who to connect with.













3. Fundraise

No matter how well publicized an organization is, almost all social enterprises (particularly those in startup and growth stages) need more money than they have. Social entrepreneurs rely on networks of friends and supporters to take some of the fundraising burden off their shoulders and allow them to focus on their missions. So get creative; instead of just donating a few dollars once, organize a group of your friends to give collaboratively every month. Change.org is just one of an incredible number of tools you have to help build the networks of support that good organizations rely on.



















4. Volunteer or get an internship

While fundraising is great, it can be even more rewarding to see an organization you care about in action. With organizations providing direct services you may be able to work directly with the communities social entrepreneurs seek to support. For some others, your opportunities may be more based in office work and administrative tasks. Either way, being part of a team in an entrepreneurial, mission-driven organization is an incredibly rewarding (and challenging!) experience.

5. Advocate

One of the things that often distinguishes social entrepreneurs is their desire not only to remedy a problem, but to change the social landscape that allowed that problem to happen in the first place. For many organizations, this means pairing their philanthropic endeavors with government advocacy. Like fundraising, advocacy efforts require support from people like you, organizing your friends, peers and social networks.




















6. Go to the source and LISTEN

The most important thing anyone who wishes to create change can do is to spend time with and learn from the communities experiencing the poverty, injustice, and inequality you wish to address. Nonprofits have long known that the most sustainable solutions to any problem are those that come from impacted communities, but it’s only recently that our transportation and communication infrastructures have given average people the opportunity to learn from one another. Intern abroad, do a volunteer vacation, work in a different part of your town. Just listen, listen, listen. No matter what you end up doing, your efforts will be better for it.


7. Enroll

Increased interest in social entrepreneurship has prompted business schools like Haas at Berkeley and Kellogg at Northwestern and undergraduate departments to begin to offer courses, certificates and even degrees in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. If you’re a currently a student or thinking about going back to school, programs in social entrepreneurship can be indispensable in giving you the analytic and reflective tools to run and support entrepreneurial, mission-driven organizations.


8. Enter a competition

So you care passionately about an issue and think you’ve got a good plan for addressing some social ill, but you’re not sure you’re ready to start an organization? A great way to test an idea is to enter a university business plan competition such as the Global Social Benefit Incubator, or even an online competition like ideablob.com or changemakers.net. These structured environments will force you to think about your idea in new ways and more practical terms, and can help you understand whether you’re ready to take the plunge of starting a new organization.


9. Always challenge yourself

One of the hallmarks of a good educational experience is that it provides you materials that directly challenge what you think you believe. For aspiring social entrepreneurs, or even just those interested the field, it’s as if not MORE important to read criticism like Michael Edwards “Just Another Emperor” and constantly reflect upon your own ambitions. Another great challenge for would-be social entrepreneurs is to ask yourself if you really need to start a new organization, or whether your efforts would be better spent supporting ongoing work. Remember, ideas that challenge your believes don’t undermine your passion and commitment to social justice; they reinforce it and better prepare you for tackling complicated problems.


10. Start your own organization

So you’ve learned from other social entrepreneurs, read about your field, and spent time learning directly from people who experience the problems you want to address. You’ve read and reflected to challenge your own ideas, entered a competition, and you’re convinced you’ve got something. Go for it, and go for it all the way. Building organizations is not easy, but its possible, it’s important, and if you proceed in the right ways, it can be incredibly rewarding. And hey, you know where to come for support and ideas, right?

Social Business Entrepreneurs

by Muhammad Yunus

Capitalism is Interpreted too Narrowly

Many of the problems in the world remain unresolved because we continue to interpret capitalism too narrowly. In this narrow interpretation we create a one-dimensional human being to play the role of entrepreneur. We insulate him from other dimensions of life, such as, religious, emotional, political dimensions. He is dedicated to one mission in his business life ---- to maximize profit. He is supported by masses of one-dimensional human beings who back him up with their investment money to achieve the same mission. The game of free market works out beautifully with one-dimensional investors and entrepreneurs. We have remained so mesmerised by the success of the free market that we never dared to express any doubt about it. We worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualised in theory to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.

Economic theory postulates that you are contributing to the society and the world in the best possible manner if you just concentrate on squeezing out the maximum for yourself. When you get your maximum, everybody else will get their maximum.

As we devotedly follow this policy sometimes doubts appear in our mind whether we are doing the right thing. Things don't look too good around us. We quickly brush off our doubts by saying all these bad things happen because of "market failures"; well-functioning market cannot produce unpleasant results.

I think things are going wrong not because of "market failure". It is much deeper than that. Let us be brave and admit that it is because of "conceptualisation failure". More specifically, it is the failure to capture the essence of a human being in our theory. Everyday human beings are not one-dimensional entities, they are excitingly multi-dimensional and indeed very colourful. Their emotions, beliefs, priorities, behaviour patterns can be more aptly described by drawing analogy with the basic colours and millions of colours and shades they produce.

Social Business Entrepreneurs Can Play a Big Role in the Market

Suppose we postulate a world with two kinds of people, both one-dimensional, but having different objectives. One type is the existing type, i.e. profit maximizing type. Second type is a new type, who are not interested in profit-maximization. They are totally committed to make a difference to the world. They are social-objective driven. They want to give better chance in life to other people. They want to achieve their objective through creating/supporting sustainable business enterprises. Their businesses may or may not earn profit, but like any other businesses they must not incur losses. They create a new class of business which we may describe as "non-loss" business.

Can we find second type of people in the real world ? Yes, we can. Aren't we familiar with "do-gooders" ? Do-gooders are the same people who are referred to as "social entrepreneurs" in formal parlance.

Social entrepreneurism is an integral part of human history. Most people take pleasure in helping others. All religions encourage this quality in human beings. Governments reward them by giving tax breaks. Special legal facilities are created for them so that they can create legal entities to pursue their objectives. Some social entrepreneurs (SE) use money to achieve their objectives, some just give away their time, labour, talent, skill or such other contributions which are useful to others. Those who use money may or may not try to recover part or all of the money they put into their work by charging fee or price.

We may classify the SEs, who use money, into four types :

i) No cost recovery
ii) Some cost recovery
iii) Full cost recovery
iv) More than full cost-recovery

Once a SE operate at 100% or beyond the cost recovery point he has entered the business world with limitless possibilities. This is a moment worth celebrating. He has overcome the gravitational force of financial dependence and now is ready for space flight ! This is the critical moment of significant institutional transformation. He has moved from the world of philanthropy to the world of business. To distinguish him from the first two types of SEs listed above, we'll call him "social business entrepreneur" (SBE).

With the introduction of SBEs, the market place becomes more interesting and competitive. Interesting because two different kinds of objectives are now at play creating two different sets of frameworks for price determination. Competitive because there are more players now than before. These new players can be equally aggressive and enterprising in achieving their goals as the other entrepreneurs.

SBEs can become very powerful players in the national and international economy. Today if we add up the assets of all the SBEs of the world, it would not add up to even an ultra-thin slice of the global economy. It is not because they basically lack growth potential, but because conceptually we neither recognised their existence, nor made any room for them in the market. They are considered freaks, and kept outside the mainstream economy. We do not pay any attention to them, because our eyes are blinded by the theories taught in our schools.

If SBEs exist in the real world, it makes no sense why we should not make room for them in our conceptual framework. Once we recognise them supportive institutions, policies, regulations, norms, and rules will come into being to help them become mainstream.

Market is always considered to be an utterly incapable institution to address social problems. To the contrary, market is recognised as an institution significantly contributing to creating social problems (environmental hazards, inequality, health, unemployment, ghettoes, crimes, etc.). Since market has no capacity to solve social problem, this responsibility is handed over to the State. This arrangement was considered as the only solution until command economies were created where State took over everything, abolishing market.

But this did not last long. With command economies gone we are back to the artificial division of work between the market and the State. In this arrangement market is turned into an exclusive playground of the personal gain seekers, overwhelmingly ignoring the common interest of communities and the world as a whole.

With the economy expanding at an unforeseen speed, personal wealth reaching unimaginable heights, technological innovations making this speed faster and faster, globalisation threatening to wipe out the weak economies and the poor people from the economic map, it is time to consider the case of SBEs more seriously than we did ever before. Not only is it not necessary to leave the market solely to the personal-gain seekers, it is extremely harmful to mankind as a whole to do that. It is time to move away from the narrow interpretation of capitalism and broaden the concept of market by giving full recognition to SBEs. Once this is done SBEs can flood the market and make the market work for social goals as efficiently as it does for personal goals.

Social Stock Market

How do we encourage creation of SBEs ? What are the steps that we need to take to facilitate the SBEs to take up bigger and bigger chunks of market share ?

First, we must recognise the SBEs in our theory. Students must learn that businesses are of two kinds : a) business to make money, and b) business to do good to others. Young people must learn that they have a choice to make --- which kind of entrepreneur they would like to be ? If we broaden the interpretation of capitalism even more, they'll have wider choice of mixing these two basic types in proportions just right for their own taste.

Second, we must make the SBEs and social business investors visible in the market place. As long as SBEs operate within the cultural environment of present stock markets they'll remain restricted by the existing norms and lingo of trading. SBEs must develop their own norms, standards, measurements, evaluation criteria, and terminology. This can be achieved only if we create a separate stockmarket for social business enterprises and investors. We can call it Social Stock Market. Investors will come here to invest their money for the cause they believe in, and in the company they think is doing the best in achieving a particular mission. There may be some companies listed in this social stock market who are excellent in achieving their mission at the same time making very attractive profit on the side. Obviously these companies will attract both kinds of investors, social-goal oriented as well as personal-gain oriented.


Making profit will not disqualify an enterprise to be a social business enterprise. Basic deciding factor for this will be whether the social goal remains to be enterprise's over-arching goal, and it is clearly reflected in its decision-making. There will be well-defined stringent entry and exit criteria for a company to qualify to be listed in the social stock market and to lose that status. Soon companies will emerge which will succeed in mixing both social goal and personal goal. There will be decision-rules to decide upto what point they still qualify to enter the social stock market, and at what point they must leave it. Investors must remain convinced that companies listed in the social stock market are truly social business enterprises.

Along with the creation of the Social Stock Market we'll need to create rating agencies, appropriate impact assessment tools, indices to understand which social business enterprise is doing more and/or better than others --- so that social investors are correctly guided. This industry will need its Social Wall Street Journal and Social Financial Times to bring out all the exciting, as well as the terrible, news stories and analyses to keep the social entrepreneurs and investors properly informed and forewarned.

Within business schools we can start producing social MBAs to meet the demand of the SBEs as well as preparing young people to become SBEs themselves. I think young people will respond very enthusiastically to the challenge of making serious contributions to the world by becoming SBEs.

We'll need to arrange financing for SBEs. New bank branches specialising in financing social business ventures will have to come up. New "angels" will have to show up on the scene. Social Venture Capitalists will have to join hands with the SBEs.

How to Make a Start

One good way to get started with creating social business enterprises would be to launch a design competition for social business enterprises. There can be local competition, regional competition and global competition. Prizes for the successful designs will come in the shape of financing for the enterprises, or as partnership for implementing the projects.

All submitted social business proposals can be published so that these can become the starting points for the designers in the next cycles, or ideas for someone who wants to start a social business enterprise.

Social Stock Market itself can be started by a SBE as social business enterprise. One business school, or several business schools can join hands to launch this as a project and start serious business transactions.

Let us not expect that a social business enterprise will come up, from its very birth, with all the answers to a social problem. Most likely, it will proceed in steps. Each step may lead to the next level of achievement. Grameen Bank is a good example in this regard. In creating Grameen Bank I never had a blue-print to follow. I moved one step at a time, always thinking this step will be my last step. But it was not. That one step led me to another step, a step which looked so interesting that it was difficult to walk away from. I faced this situation at every turn.

I started my work by giving small amount of money to a few poor people without any collateral. Then I realised how good the people felt about it. I needed more money to expand the programme. To access bank money, I offered myself as a guarantor. To get support from another bank, I converted my project as the bank's project. Later, I turned it into central bank project. Over time I saw that the best strategy would be to create an independent bank to do the work that we do. So we did. We converted the project into a formal bank, borrowing money from the central bank to lend money to the borrowers. Since donors became interested in our work, and wanted to support us, we borrowed and received grants from international donors. At one stage we decided to be self-reliant. This led us to focus on generating money internally by collecting deposits. Now Grameen Bank has more money in deposits than it lends out to borrowers. It lends out half a billion dollars a year, in loans averaging under $ 200, to 4.5 million borrowers, without collateral, and maintains 99 per cent repayment record.

We introduced many programmes in the bank --- housing loans, student loans, pension funds, loans to purchase mobile phones to become the village telephone ladies, loans to beggars to become door-to-door salesman. One came after another.
If we create the right environment, SBEs can take up significant market share and make the market an exciting place for fighting social battles in ever innovative and effective ways.
Lets get serious about social business entrepreneurs. They can brighten up this gloomy world.

Posted by: Mimmy Duhaylungsod
Source: Grameen-info

"instead of giving them fish, teach them instead how to fish."

In our book, Contemporary Entrepreneurship by N.A. ORCULLO, JR., Ph. D, the word social entrepreneurship is defined as..

..the idea is not only promoting the purely business (profit motive) side of the venture but it also focused on providing a venue for employment generation at the resource location mostly in the countryside... "instead of giving them fish, teach them instead how to fish."

Posted by: Jasmin Bautista

Social entrepreneurship - Its promises and its challenges

Last March 2005's Alliance magazine includes this article. The article is all about the promises and challenges of Social Entrepreneurship.

First, the magazine liked to jump headlong into the discussion on social entrepreneurship by asking five questions:

1. Do you regularly take at least three weeks’ holiday a year?
2. Do you give any thought to what you will do when you retire, looking longingly at the time when you will no longer have to be in the office from nine to five – or often much later?
3. Does the thought of not having a regular monthly pay cheque drive you to the medicine cabinet in search of a tranquillizer?
4. Do you need to feel that your friends and co-workers approve of what you are doing?
5. Do you spend any less than 24 hours a day obsessing over new ways to transform society?

The article stated:

When you have answered ‘yes’ to at least two of those questions, chances are that you are not a social entrepreneur.

But before you put down this issue of Alliance because you have decided it obviously has nothing to do with you, we want to assure you that very few people are social entrepreneurs. Indeed, a world populated by social entrepreneurs alone would be as unbalanced as one filled only with public servants or corporate sector representatives. What is important is to be able to recognize social entrepreneurs, and the vital innovative and transformative role that they play, and ensure that they are fully supported by other sectors.

This issue of Alliance will explore what it means to be a social entrepreneur from the point of view of its leading proponents and practitioners. Persistent challenges for social entrepreneurship will be examined, including how best to scale up innovations and assess impact without losing the vision, as well as how to work effectively with other major stakeholders and potential supporters, including governments, business, multilateral and bilateral organizations, foundations and high net worth individuals. What is the role of education and the media in social entrepreneurship? What systems and services must be created to provide the kind of financial and other supports social entrepreneurs need?

Prior to delving into these issues, we need to define what we are talking about, for as social entrepreneurship has become a generalized ‘buzzword’, it is suffering from the ‘five blind men and the elephant’ syndrome. Because it is a relatively new field, people tend to base their definitions of social entrepreneurship on subjective and relatively limited experience rather than on a broad base of empirically derived knowledge and, to a certain extent, that’s what we’re doing. In that sense, we, too, suffer from the ‘elephant syndrome’. Nevertheless, and in all humility, we would suggest the following description of a social entrepreneur – and conversely, offer our ideas on where confusion over its definition might partly lie.

What a social entrepreneur is …

A social entrepreneur identifies practical solutions to social problems by combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity. Committed to producing social value, these entrepreneurs identify new processes, services and products, or unique ways of combining proven practice with innovation to address complex social problems. Whether the focus of their work is on enterprise development, health, education, environment, labour conditions or human rights, social entrepreneurs are people who seize on the problems created by change as opportunities to transform societies.

The organizations set up by social entrepreneurs defy pigeonholing. They cannot be lumped easily into the non-profit or for-profit worlds that we cling to. Increasingly, social entrepreneurs are setting up their organizations as for-profit entities, though most are still constituted as not-for-profits. The point is that the legal form chosen for the entity is simply a strategic decision based on how best to achieve the mission. They don’t shun existing economic models, but most social entrepreneurs are pragmatic about the limitations of market economics and persistent about finding ways to use markets to empower the poor. Most experiment with and perfect business models that allow the poor to have access to the wide variety of technologies that the more fortunate among us take for granted – from information communications technology and health care to ways of ensuring good housing, clean water, access to energy, decent wages, relevant education and so on.

Social entrepreneurs undertake both public and private sector functions simultaneously. On the one hand, they work with people that governments have been unable to reach effectively with basic public goods and services. On the other, they address market failures by providing access to private goods and services to markets where business does not operate because the risks are too great and the financial rewards too few. With little market reward or assistance, social entrepreneurs are reshaping the architecture for building sustainable and peaceful societies.

Social entrepreneurs are the ultimate scenario planners of our time. They see desirable futures in present conditions, and act to bring them about, generally in spite of efforts to persuade them to the contrary. They are disrupters and activists who challenge the notion of incremental, continuous improvement. Social entrepreneurs don’t believe in more of the same, and they appear to relish what keeps the rest of us awake at night – uncertainty and risk.

… and what a social entrepreneur is not

Social entrepreneurs aren’t just founders of social enterprises. While some social enterprises are created by social entrepreneurs, not all of them are. The term social enterprise emerged recently with reference to non-profit organizations seeking new and different ways to generate the funds they need to operate. Now social enterprises are being created by governments to catalyse community renewal and provide excluded groups with income-generating opportunities. The vast majority of social enterprises focus on the delivery of goods and services. Social transformation and system change are not their primary drivers, as with social entrepreneurs.

This may seem like a superfluous distinction but it isn’t. There is a marked difference between a social entrepreneur and a manager of a social enterprise. While the latter is essential for the smooth running of the operation, the former is a mover and a shaker, the motor of social transformation.

Nor are they business entrepreneurs. However, the two are sometimes confused, so it’s useful to draw some distinctions. For a start, social entrepreneurs are committed to social value creation, so finance is a means to an end for them, never the end in itself. Personal reward, risk and cost become secondary concerns; and they typically take little for themselves. They display innovation, resourcefulness and practicality just like business entrepreneurs, but their products, services, clients and business methods are dictated by the needs of underserved markets and stakeholders. They are often more comfortable with the unconventional than with the conventional in reaching beyond the limits of the marketplace to serve the needy.

By virtue of their social mission, social entrepreneurs are often thrown into the same pot with other organizations in the citizen sector, those referred to by the misnomer ‘NGO’. But here again a distinction needs to be made. Social entrepreneurs are practical and focused on outcomes rather than process, while many in the citizen sector are wedded to the latter. Moreover, social entrepreneurs tend to shun ideological positions as they prevent one from spotting the opportunities for transformational social change. Nor do they embrace charitable models that aim to alleviate suffering and address social issues without changing the conditions that gave rise to that suffering. Social entrepreneurs seek transformation of the status quo.

To get some idea of what these distinctions mean in practice, if you were to combine a Mother Teresa with a Richard Branson, you’d be getting close to a social entrepreneur – a Fazle Abed, for example, or one of the other accomplished social entrepreneurs featured in this issue.

The benefits of working with social entrepreneurs

The greatest challenge for social entrepreneurs lies in persuading all other actors to reinforce and support them. Neither governments, businesses, multilateral and bilateral institutions, foundations, philanthropists, and academia nor the civil sector have yet caught up with this emerging field, and they too often stand in its way.

Yet all these groups stand to gain tremendously from stimulating and supporting social entrepreneurship. And social entrepreneurs need them. In fact, social entrepreneurs will be the first to say that alone they cannot undertake their critical work of social and economic change. They need the support of imaginative, compassionate and talented people from all sectors who can help social entrepreneurship live up to its promise.

The public sector
Government has a critical role to play in supporting social entrepreneurs, as we will see in the article by Sheela Patel of SPARC in India (see p24). However, with few exceptions, governments and government bodies have yet to recognize social entrepreneurship as a legitimate field of endeavour. This recognition is crucial if governments are to provide a better fiscal and legislative environment for social entrepreneurs, including the review of tax laws and the elimination of burdensome regulations, arbitrary decision-making and other requirements and practices that hamper them. More often than not, social entrepreneurs find themselves shunning collaboration with governments for reasons ranging from corruption to inefficiency and indifference on the part of government bureaucrats. Where government-social entrepreneur collaboration has been effective, the benefits have been manifold for both, but such examples are rare.

Companies
Increasingly, companies are beginning to appreciate the merits of working with social entrepreneurs, mainly for three reasons, all related to competitiveness.

• From a financial perspective, reaching untapped markets can be greatly facilitated by working with social entrepreneurs who have spent decades designing, implementing and refining innovative ways of bringing previously excluded groups into the marketplace.
• Increasingly, companies are discovering that consumers expect them to pay some heed to the social effects of their operation. Companies are discovering that they can ‘outsource’ the social innovation element to social entrepreneurs in the same way they have done with product innovation and business entrepreneurs.
• From a human resources perspective, the ability to attract top talent is a major challenge for companies. But the best and brightest today are looking for more than impressive salaries and stock options. They want something that gives meaning to their work and their lives. Supporting social entrepreneurs in different ways shows that companies care about more than the bottom line.

Foundations and philanthropists
These are best placed to support social innovators, as they are free of the voting booth and the financial bottom line, the forces that dominate the decisions of government and business respectively. But too many foundations and philanthropists seem content to fund demonstration projects that they hope will produce dramatic results in a very limited time. This is unrealistic, misplaced and costly. As so many successful social entrepreneurs can vouch, it often takes years before their idea takes shape into a viable and scalable solution. Even then, the approach must be constantly modified to respond to unforeseen obstacles or dynamics along the way. This issue’s article on ‘Learning from mistakes’ (see p35) highlights how every obstacle encountered by the social entrepreneur means modifying the idea or the way it is implemented.

A social entrepreneur continuously adapts. As Ela BhattMirai Chatterjee, founder member of the ground-breaking Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, put it, ‘The biggest thing we have learned after 30 years of existence is that there are no definite victories or defeats. The most important thing is to keep on going.’ Foundations need to rethink their focus on supporting demonstration projects. They can have much greater impact by scaling up demonstrably successful social innovations initiated and implemented by social entrepreneurs. The wheel does not need to be reinvented, just adapted to travel in new terrain.

Multilateral and bilateral development organizations
It is evident that multilateral and bilateral development organizations, to a greater or lesser degree, have all increased their collaboration with non-state actors, including social entrepreneurs. Much of this change has occurred in the last decade in response to general calls for reform to make these organizations better equipped to respond to the challenges of the 21st century. In particular, strong criticism has been made of those multilateral institutions responsible for finance, development and trade for their failure to consult civil society and interest groups on their policies. Some institutions have responded by devoting time and energy to dialogue with non-state actors. But more needs to be done.

We are in an interesting phase of new thinking and experimentation, and these institutions have a vital and catalytic role. They should make it a priority to spot and legitimize social entrepreneurs who have the capacity to imagine and the ability to implement what they imagine through disciplined innovation. In this issue, Andrea Coleman of Riders for Health (see p25) and Victoria Hale of OneWorld Health (see p27) describe their ups and downs working with UN organizations to illustrate the benefits and difficulties inherent in such partnerships.

Academia
Finally, the academic sector has a key role to play in fostering social entrepreneurship and advancing knowledge about it (see Rowena Young’s article on p30). Important strides have been made, particularly at university level, but we have barely begun to instill entrepreneurial thinking in younger students. And while we all know that entrepreneurship is not something to be learned out of a book, it must be cultivated. The entrepreneurial mindset has been described in terms of the following characteristics: commitment and determination; leadership; obsession with opportunity; tolerance of risk, ambiguity and uncertainty; creativity; self-reliance; ability to adapt; and motivation to excel. Primary and secondary schools across the globe should be supported in their efforts to develop a curriculum that instills these characteristics in future global citizens, whether they become social entrepreneurs or not.

Summing up
Perhaps the most important qualities of social entrepreneurs are courage and resilience. Their courage allows them to champion a cause and to take risks others wouldn’t dare to take. Their resilience enables them to endure the obstacles and setbacks along the way to achieving transformational social change for as many as possible, as soon as possible.

We cannot expect the systems and structures that created the problems we face to come up with solutions to those problems. Too many of us have lived within those systems for too long, blinding us to other possibilities. As historian Barbara Tuckman noted, men and woman ‘…will not believe what does not fit in with their plans or suit their prearrangements’. Social entrepreneurs, with their hybrid approaches derived from inspired pragmatism, can work with any and all sectors, offering new and very different approaches to what many of us say we want to do – change the world.

Guest editors for the special Alliance feature on ‘Social entrepreneurship – its promise and challenges’

Pamela Hartigan is the Managing Director and a Board Member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a Geneva-based organization dedicated to improving the state of the world though social entrepreneurship. She can be contacted at Pamela.Hartigan@schwabfound.org Jeroo Billimoria is a social entrepreneur, and founder of numerous transformational initiatives including Childline India and Child Helpline International. She can be contacted at jeroo@childhelplineinternational.org

Source:http://www.alliancemagazine.org/node/1061

Barack Obama - Social Entrepreneurship Agency for Nonprofits

I stayed up late today because i was supposed to watch Illac Diaz at correspondents show and Obama's Inauguration but apparently the correspondents show was not aired because maybe, the Inauguration of Obama was the priority of the channel. It's exactly 1:28AM (Philippine Time) and i just want to share the things/thoughts i liked in the speech of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

Barack Obama...
We are in the midst of crisis

We have chosen hope over fear

Time has come to put away childish things

Lay new foundations of growth

Restore science, race health cure and lower its cost

Root to our common good

Challenges will be met

Transform to meet new age

Begin the work of remaking America

Spend wisely (i agree)

America is a friend of each nation

We will not give up our ideals

Power alone cannot protect us

Security emanates to our actions

We are ready to lead once more

We will begin to responsively leave Iraq

Our spirit is stronger than terrorism

.. people will judge you on what you build, not on what you destroy

We pledge to work with poor nations

The world has change and we must change with it

Selflessness of workers, parents willingness to nurture child...

Honesty, hard work, loyalty, patriotism - these are old and true
We should return to this truth..

Calling all the people, spirit of bible.

black will not be asked to get back,
brown can stick around,
yellow will be mellow, the red man can get ahead, man,
and white will embrace what is right
- benediction for Obama

Truely, the CHANGE has finally come and I hope everything said will be put into action. The speech is full of inspiration that ALL nations, color and religion should work together to achieve a perfect union and defeat the economic crisis, recession, inflation and unemployment. I'm hoping that this very inspiring and wise man will have a faithful service not just to his country but to the whole world.
We should all be responsible in our actions, support each other, have great relations, seek forgiveness, and most importantly, choose in the side of LOVE not in the side of hate. I also hope for ONENESS! It is the oneness of families, churches, colors, countries and faith.

Why do I have to include this in this blog?

I included this because it is the first time an American President uttered the words “social entrepreneur". President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plan to have a Social Entrepreneurship Agency for Nonprofits. They will create an agency within the Corporation for National and Community Service dedicated to building the capacity and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector.

Great isn't it?

He proposed $3.5 billion a year for social investment, paid for by ending the war in Iraq and eliminating corporate tax loopholes. This idea is still conceptual, but it was accompanied by words that indicate that President Obama understands the importance of the NPO sector and the role of social entrepreneurs in the economy.

Posted by: Mimmy Duhaylungsod

Muhammad Yunus

This video includes Muhammad Yunus' stories and visions before and after being a social entrepreneur.

"First, i want to find a solution to a problem..."

"It took so little money to free village women from modern-day slavery, humiliation and torture... "

Posted by: Mimmy Duhaylungsod

Inspiring story - “Giving Away” $50 Bills

by Mark Skousen, Chairman, Investment U

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank: The Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Genius Behind the World’s Most Original Bank (Which Is “Giving Away” $50 Bills)

I remember as a young boy people telling me that borrowing money and going into debt were very, very bad.

“Neither a lender nor borrower be,” declared Shakespeare. Ben Franklin warned in The Way to Wealth, “The first vice is running in debt… You give to another power over your liberty… Be frugal and free.”

And church leader J. Rueben Clark says debt “never sleeps nor sickens nor dies… and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.”

Financial advisors warn repeatedly to stay out of debt, and gold bugs publish charts showing the national debt by consumers, business and government climbing to unsustainable levels.

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

Going into debt is a serious matter and should not be done lightly. I don’t recommend it for most consumer goods, and certainly not for buying food at the grocery store or 7-Eleven. In short, use cash.

Debt, however, does have its advantages. In this issue, we’ll discuss Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and the Micro-Credit Revolution. First, a closer look at the virtue of debt as it relates to the Micro-Credit movement…


The Difference Between Starvation and Prosperity

For those of you still skeptical about the virtue of debt, consider this…

Laily Begun and her husband, Atiqullah, were manual laborers in Bangladesh who barely had enough to eat. She took out a $50 “micro” loan from the Grameen Bank to buy a cow, which allowed her to make some extra cash selling milk.

She borrowed another $65 for a second cow, and her little business flourished. Now she had enough to apply for a mobile phone. Laily became known as the “Village Phone Lady,” and before long, she was earning nearly $300 a month. With their savings, the couple set up five shops and a restaurant. They now live in a brick house, own two color TVs, a refrigerator and a cassette player, and send their three children to school.

All because of a $50 starter loan.

The Grameen Bank is not a charity. Billions in foreign aid have been thrown at poor people without effect. Only when a for-profit bank began lending to the desperately poor did anything positive come of it. Grameen Bank charges 18% interest on its micro-loans, and has only a 5% default rate. How is this possible? Borrowers must join small support groups, and if one defaults, the others are forced to take over his debts.

It seems impossible, but so far the Grameen Bank has made more than $5 billion in loans, and its model has been imitated around the world, even by the World Bank.

Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in the world’s poorest country, and today has branches in over 71,371 villages in Bangladesh through collateral-free micro credits to needy entrepreneurs.

While the World Bank has imitated his micro-credit model, Yunus decries the organization in his book Banker to the Poor: “We at the Grameen Bank have never wanted or accepted World Bank funding because we do not like the way the bank conducts business.” Nor does he like foreign aid. “Aid-funding projects create massive bureaucracies, which quickly become corrupt and inefficient, incurring huge losses.”


Posted by: Mimmy Duhaylungsod
Source: http://www.investmentu.com/

All human beings are potential entrepreneurs

Yunus believes that poverty can be eradicated by loaning poor people the capital they need to engage in profitable businesses, not by giving them a handout or engaging in population control. In his own words, “All human beings are potential entrepreneurs.”

Edited & Posted by Mimmy Duhaylungsod
Sources: flicker.com & http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2006/20061027.html

Muhammad Yunus on Ending Global Poverty

HOW DO WE DEFINE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

Social Entrepreneurship is TO HELP others and TO SOLVE problems.
It is a help in creating an equal opportunity, peace, justice and sustainable world.
It is a solve by searching for change, acting to change and using change as an opportunity.

Edited & Posted by: Mimmy Duhaylungsod

Inspiring Social Entrepreneurs

Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and father of microcredit, provides a classic example of social entrepreneurship. The stable but unfortunate equilibrium he identified consisted of poor Bangladeshis’ limited options for securing even the tiniest amounts of credit. Unable to qualify for loans through the formal banking system, they could borrow only by accepting exorbitant interest rates from local moneylenders. More commonly, they simply succumbed to begging on the streets.

Here was a stable equilibrium of the most unfortunate sort, one that perpetuated and even exacerbated Bangladesh’s endemic poverty and the misery arising from it.Yunus confronted the system, proving that the poor were extremely good credit risks by lending the now famous sum of $27 from his own pocket to 42 women from the village of Jobra.

The women repaid all of the loan. Yunus found that with even tiny amounts of capital, women invested in their own capacity for generating income. With a sewing machine, for example, women could tailor garments, earning enough to pay back the loan, buy food, educate their children, and lift themselves up from poverty. Grameen Bank sustained itself by charging interest on its loans and then recycling the capital to help other women.

Yunus brought inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage, and fortitude to his venture, proved its viability, and over two decades spawned a global network of other organizations that replicated or adapted his model to other countries and cultures, firmly establishing microcredit as a worldwide industry.

The well-known actor, director, and producer Robert Redford offers a less familiar but also illustrative case of social entrepreneurship. In the early 1980s, Redford stepped back from his successful career to reclaim space in the film industry for artists. Redford was struck by a set of opposing forces in play. He identified an inherently oppressive but stable equilibrium in the way Hollywood worked, with its business model increasingly driven by financial interests, its productions gravitating to flashy, frequently violent blockbusters, and its studio-dominated system becoming more and more centralized in controlling the way films were financed, produced, and distributed. At the same time, he noted that new technology was emerging – less cumbersome and less expensive video and digital editing equipment – that gave filmmakers the tools they needed to exert more control over their work.

Seeing opportunity, Redford seized the chance to nurture this new breed of artist. First, he created the Sundance Institute to take “money out of the picture” and provide young filmmakers with space and support for developing their ideas. Next, he created the Sundance Film Festival to showcase independent filmmakers’ work. From the beginning, Redford’s value proposition focused on the emerging independent filmmaker whose talents were neither recognized nor served by the market stranglehold of the Hollywood studio system.

Victoria Hale is an example of a social entrepreneur whose venture is still in its early stages and for whom our criteria apply ex ante. Hale is a pharmaceutical scientist who became increasingly frustrated by the market forces dominating her industry. Although big pharmaceutical companies held patents for drugs capable of curing any number of infectious diseases, the drugs went undeveloped for a simple reason: The populations most in need of the drugs were unable to afford them. Driven by the exigency of generating financial profits for its shareholders, the pharmaceutical industry was focusing on creating and marketing drugs for diseases afflicting the well-off, living mostly in developed world markets, who could pay for them.

Hale became determined to challenge this stable equilibrium, which she saw as unjust and intolerable. She created the Institute for One World Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company whose mission is to ensure that drugs targeting infectious diseases in the developing world get to the people who need them, regardless of their ability to pay for the drugs. Hale’s venture has now moved beyond the proof-of-concept stage. It successfully developed, tested, and secured Indian government regulatory approval for its first drug, paromomycin, which provides a cost-effective cure for visceral leishmaniasis, a disease that kills more than 200,000 people each year.

Why not call these people social entrepreneurs? It wouldn’t be a tragedy. But such people have long had a name and an exalted tradition: the tradition of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Vaclav Havel. They are social activists. Calling them something entirely new – i.e., social entrepreneurs – and thereby confusing the general public, who already know what a social activist is, would not be helpful to the cause of either social activists or social entrepreneurs.

Source: http://www.ssireview.org/