What is a Social Entrepreneur?

http://coolmel.gaia.com — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:07:37 GMT

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

Ashoka Fellows prove every day that the most powerful force for change in the world is a new idea in the hands of a leading social entrepreneur.

The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. He or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire societies to take new leaps. Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.

Identifying and solving large-scale social problems requires a social entrepreneur because only the entrepreneur has the committed vision and inexhaustible determination to persist until they have transformed an entire system. The scholar comes to rest when he expresses an idea. The professional succeeds when she solves a client's problem. The manager calls it quits when he has enabled his organization to succeed. Social entrepreneurs go beyond the immediate problem to fundamentally change communities, societies, the world.

Ashoka Fellow Veronica Khosa was frustrated with the system of health care in South Africa. A nurse by trade she saw sick people getting sicker, elderly people unable to get to a doctor and hospitals with empty beds that would not admit patients with HIV. So Veronica started Tateni Home Care Nursing Services and instituted the concept of "home care" in her country. Beginning with practically nothing, her team took to the streets providing care to people in a way they had never received it — in the comfort and security of their homes. Just years later, the government had adopted her plan and through the recognition of leading health organizations the idea is spreading beyond South Africa. Social entrepreneurs like Veronica redefine their field and go on to solve systemic social problems on a larger scale.

The past two decades have seen an extraordinary explosion of entrepreneurship and competition in the social sector. The social sector has discovered what the business sector learned from the railroad, the stock market and todayýs digital revolution: That nothing is as powerful as a big new idea — if it is in the hands of a first class entrepreneur.

In country after country the number of citizen organizations is up hundreds, often thousands-fold. Tiny Slovakia had a handful of such organizations in 1989 and now boasts more than 10,000. Of the approximately 2 million citizen sector organizations working in the United States, 70 percent of them were established in the last 30 years. Eastern Europe has seen more than 100,000 such organizations established in the seven years following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The revolution — led by leaders like Veronica — is fundamentally changing the way society organizes itself and the way we approach social problems. These leaders are certainly doing more than giving a fish. They are teaching the world to swim.

Gaia: Starship Social Enterprise - What is Starship Social Enterprise? - What is a Social Entrepreneur?

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

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