So, I know that many of you are wondering the same question, what is social entrepreneurship? For those of you who already know and have just rolled your eyes out of boredom and exasperation with me, you are most certainly welcome to skip straight to the next paragraph where I outline exactly what I'm doing with S.E. in the first place. For those of you who are new to the term, I'll give you a brief description. Social Entrepreneurship (S.E.) is in some ways a lot like commercial entrepreneurship. The most important difference between S.E. and regular "entrepreneurship" is that S.E. specifically addresses social needs and concerns that are not being met by either government or the private market. Additionally, the motivation behind S.E. is social benefit. There are a lot of other little details that make up S.E., and if you're really interested you can pick up a copy of Social Entrepreneurship: A Modern Approach to Social Value Creation, by Arthur C. Brooks (2009). It's a great little book, short, sweet, and easy to read. Its great for learning the basics of S.E., and it's the first book I had to read in my S.E. seminar, which I'm taking at the College of Wooster. Here at Wooster, we've actually added a few concepts to our definition of S.E. First of all, we like to think of S.E. as "transforming the fishing industry." Basically, S.E. isn't necessarily confined to the old rules of doing business, but can and should seek to find new and innovative ways to providing social needs to the community, with special attention to the unintended consequences of our actions.
Alright, so why am I writing this blog? Well, as I've hinted at in the earlier paragraph, I'm taking a Global Social Entrepreneurship (GSE) seminar at school this semester. This seminar is super cool because at the end of the semester, we will all be traveling abroad for a six week field experience in Bangalore, India. The class consists of 12 GSE students, an adviser, TA, and Lilly Project Liaison. It's quite an eclectic group, but everyone gets along really well, and we've already had a lot of fun together in and out of class. When we are in India, we will be split up into teams of two, and then assigned to one of three Indian non-profit organizations where we will get to work on a super awesome project for six weeks. The organizations we'll be working with in India are Hippocampus, Premavidya, and Sattva Media. Each organization will have two teams of two students, so they can have two different projects going at the same time!
As exciting as this is, there are some things to keep in mind when we actually travel to India. First of all, we are a groups of students from the United States coming to Bangalore, India. Although not everyone in our group is actually American (I have classmates from India, Malaysia, and Vietnam), we will all be viewed as representatives of an American academic institution. We must be sensitive to those implications. We need to be very aware of what are presence may do to the dynamics of the organizations and SE networks in India (remember those "unintended consequences" I mentioned before? This is WHY that is a big part of our seminar course). We need to come in with as much knowledge about India as possible, including the political, economic, and social/cultural characteristics of the country, and Bangalore in particular.
One of the great things about the GSE program at Wooster, I think, is that I will be engaged in a process of "co-learning" with my organization. I'm not going to India to "help" instead I'm going to be collaborating and problem solving. Unfortunately, the image of Western "help" or development assistance in developing countries is basically a Western person flying in to tell the local people what to do, which little knowledge of the local situation, and often prescribing solutions that would not work in the local context because of issues such as lack of infrastructure, education, disregard of the religious and cultural practices of the community. This kind of "help" is usually never effective, which is why it is crucial for me, as an emerging global social entrepreneur, to be super sensitive to these concerns. The hope of this program, is mostly to learn. By engaging in collaborative projects with these non-profits, my goal, and the goal of the program, is to learn from each other. Being globally engaged, especially in the field of S.E., means being willing to incorporate the values and ideas of people from all different backgrounds to create sustainable social value.
Alright, so why am I writing this blog? Well, as I've hinted at in the earlier paragraph, I'm taking a Global Social Entrepreneurship (GSE) seminar at school this semester. This seminar is super cool because at the end of the semester, we will all be traveling abroad for a six week field experience in Bangalore, India. The class consists of 12 GSE students, an adviser, TA, and Lilly Project Liaison. It's quite an eclectic group, but everyone gets along really well, and we've already had a lot of fun together in and out of class. When we are in India, we will be split up into teams of two, and then assigned to one of three Indian non-profit organizations where we will get to work on a super awesome project for six weeks. The organizations we'll be working with in India are Hippocampus, Premavidya, and Sattva Media. Each organization will have two teams of two students, so they can have two different projects going at the same time!
As exciting as this is, there are some things to keep in mind when we actually travel to India. First of all, we are a groups of students from the United States coming to Bangalore, India. Although not everyone in our group is actually American (I have classmates from India, Malaysia, and Vietnam), we will all be viewed as representatives of an American academic institution. We must be sensitive to those implications. We need to be very aware of what are presence may do to the dynamics of the organizations and SE networks in India (remember those "unintended consequences" I mentioned before? This is WHY that is a big part of our seminar course). We need to come in with as much knowledge about India as possible, including the political, economic, and social/cultural characteristics of the country, and Bangalore in particular.
One of the great things about the GSE program at Wooster, I think, is that I will be engaged in a process of "co-learning" with my organization. I'm not going to India to "help" instead I'm going to be collaborating and problem solving. Unfortunately, the image of Western "help" or development assistance in developing countries is basically a Western person flying in to tell the local people what to do, which little knowledge of the local situation, and often prescribing solutions that would not work in the local context because of issues such as lack of infrastructure, education, disregard of the religious and cultural practices of the community. This kind of "help" is usually never effective, which is why it is crucial for me, as an emerging global social entrepreneur, to be super sensitive to these concerns. The hope of this program, is mostly to learn. By engaging in collaborative projects with these non-profits, my goal, and the goal of the program, is to learn from each other. Being globally engaged, especially in the field of S.E., means being willing to incorporate the values and ideas of people from all different backgrounds to create sustainable social value.
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