Social Entrepreneurs: Unacknowledged heroes of our time
The goal of any business, enterprise, and venture should not only be financial but welfaristic as well. “Social entrepreneurship” is the best form of enterprise not only because it gives your mind the opportunity to create but also because all that is eventually created is for the “whole good” of the society. Social entrepreneurship is a specified type of enterprising activity in which individuals with an objective come up with solutions to the most pressing, and hard- hitting problems in a particular society. The problems would vary from society to society, and so they are society specific. For one kind of society, education would be a hard-hitting problem and, for the other it might be water.
Social entrepreneurship is a change mechanism in which these individuals who are termed as — Social entrepreneurs share the burden of the government by not leaving the social needs of the citizens to the government or, even the bureaucracy. They rather make a remarkable, courageous and a well-planned attempt to change the system by spreading the solutions, and persuading societies to move in a direction of progress, advancement, a better tomorrow, and growth. Not only this, they also do justice to the act of social entrepreneurship by presenting user-friendly, realistic, ethical and understandable ideas. These ideas engage huge mass support for efficient implementation.
A social entrepreneur has a multi — faceted and an interesting personality!
Social entrepreneurs are ambitious as they tackle wide ranging issues from rate of low income students to limited job opportunities for people. Also, they have a caliber to operate any kind of organization; from hybrid to innovative non-profit ones. They are mission-driven as well because they believe in adding some kind of social value rather than generating wealth. Just when these two qualities made them look so good, they are also strategic for the very reason that social entrepreneurs see and act upon what others miss. Just to exemplify, they grab the opportunities which others miss in order to improve the system. The “R’s” are not behind in adding to the praise. Resourceful, as they are as they work or operate within a social framework or, context and result oriented because they have a tendency of producing measurable turns.
The nascent field of social entrepreneurship has a great history of men and women doing wonders in the same!
For starters, Vinoba Bhave (India, 1) is the founder of the “Land Gift Movement” under which there was redistribution of more than 700,000 acres of land for the purpose of aiding India’s untouchables and landless. Florence Nightingale (UK, 2), moreover, is the founder of modern nursing, and she established the first school for nurses and fought to improve hospitals. Dr. Maria Montesorri (Italy, 3) was not behind either, and developed the Montessori approach to early childhood education.
History has said to guide, and inspire men belonging to the future. And, so even our contemporary age entrepreneurs are doing great good for the society. Melinda Gates (4), the co- founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is a calibrated social entrepreneur and has been working on sensitive projects like re-inventing toilets which are a cause of socially relevant issues like rapes and diseases like diarrhea. Another name is Sally Osberg (5), the CEO and founder, of the Skoll Foundation and she is also a non-fiction writer and has written widely on the subject of social entrepreneurship. Muhammad Yunus (6), cannot be forgotten when one talks in regards of social entrepreneurship. He started the Grameen Bank and is a pioneer in micro-credit which can give a boost to many small scale start-ups and can turn out be a relief to those struck with destitution, poverty. He had also pioneered the field of micro-finance.
Social entrepreneurs, are change agents who gives birth to new innovative ideas and create solutions to bring betterment in the society. There is a social entrepreneur in each one of us who wants the welfare of the society and can come up with a revolutionary and bright thought for the same!
“Discover the social entrepreneur in you and start fighting for a cause, if you are not yet a part of one.”
Author: Darshita Neeraj
