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Alliance Extra Article - Can Social Entrepreneurship Ever Be Cool
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by Sunit Shrestha and S. Dev Appanah Across the globe, social entrepreneurship is gathering momentum. More and more social entrepreneurs have gained recogni- tion in countries as diverse as India and the United States and the concept itself has spread all the way from the rural communities that Ashoka Fellows serve to the United Nations. Yet the future impact o f the movement lies with youth. In Asia, young people make up almost half of the population. Young people have the pas- sion and energy, the strategic social posi- tioning, and the natural tendency towards problem-solving that is a key characteristic of the entrepreneurial ground-clearing process. If social entrepreneurship is to bring increased efficiency and innovation to conventional development, the most dy- namic young people must actively em- brace it. Social movements have this in common with epidemics, that in order for them to spread, they must have an average repro- duction rate of at least one. If not, the dis- ease will never become an epidemic and the social movement will expend itself with time. If talented young people are not at- tracted and catalysed by social entrepre- neurship, the movement could die out. This article looks at four key things that will be necessary if young people are to em- brace social entrepreneurship: knowledge, community , finance and mentorship. Development – an image problem Additionally, the development profession is an obsolete brand, in a world where brands represent meaning and value; de- velopment as a profession ranks much lower for young people than the private sector or government. This is especially true in developing countries where most people in this field are perceived to have taken a vow of poverty and sacrifice. The labels NGO and CSO have negative connotations and the agencies they are attached to are seen as being irrationally radical and uncompromising. Bureaucracy, egoism and inertia make the sector excep- tionally inefficient. Worse still, jobs are badly paid. In Asia, where family influence is still paramount, it is extremely rare for families to encourage their offspring to join the development sector because of the lack of opportunity, low pay and little social recognition it offers. Ironically, then, it is extremely difficult to find capable young people from developing countries who are interested in a career in development. Social entrepreneurship might be able to remedy this. The stories of successful so- cial entrepreneurs show what development professionalism can mean. These people are passionate, dynamic, efficient and in- novative, and eager to make a difference in the world. Repeatedly, they have proved that small things do matter and can be- come socially significant while generating a fair amount of personal income. They provide models that show capable young people that social entrepreneurship can offer a career that provides both social and economic returns. Providing the conditions for growth But how many capab le young people take this path? Young social entrepreneurs – and there might be any number of these – are unrecognized as yet, both locally and globally, and there is next to no support for this group of potential changemakers. It is young people who are both willing and able to become social entrepreneurs who will trigger any movement, and it is the en- vironment in which they operate that will
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by Sunit Shrestha and S. Dev Appanah
Across the globe, social entrepreneurshipis gathering momentum. More and moresocial entrepreneurs have gained recogni-tion in countries as diverse as India andthe United States and the concept itselfhas spread all the way from the ruralcommunities that Ashoka Fellows serve tothe United Nations. Yet the future impact ofthe movement lies with youth. In Asia,young people make up almost half of thepopulation. Young people have the pas-sion and energy, the strategic social posi-tioning, and the natural tendency towardsproblem-solving that is a key characteristicof the entrepreneurial !ground-clearing" process. If social entrepreneurship is tobring increased efficiency and innovationto conventional development, the most dy-namic young people must actively em-brace it.
Social movements have this in commonwith epidemics, that in order for them tospread, they must have an average repro-duction rate of at least one. If not, the dis-ease will never become an epidemic andthe social movement will expend itself withtime. If talented young people are not at-tracted and catalysed by social entrepre-neurship, the movement could die out.
This article looks at four key things that will
be necessary if young people are to em-brace social entrepreneurship: knowledge,community, finance and mentorship.
Development – an image problem
Additionally, the development profession isan obsolete brand, in a world wherebrands represent meaning and value; de-velopment as a profession ranks muchlower for young people than the private
sector or government. This is especially
true in developing countries where mostpeople in this field are perceived to havetaken a vow of poverty and sacrifice. Thelabels !NGO" and !CSO" have negativeconnotations and the agencies they areattached to are seen as being irrationallyradical and uncompromising. Bureaucracy,egoism and inertia make the sector excep-tionally inefficient. Worse still, jobs arebadly paid. In Asia, where family influenceis still paramount, it is extremely rare forfamilies to encourage their offspring to jointhe development sector because of thelack of opportunity, low pay and little socialrecognition it offers. Ironically, then, it isextremely difficult to find capable youngpeople from developing countries who areinterested in a career in development.
Social entrepreneurship might be able toremedy this. The stories of successful so-cial entrepreneurs show what developmentprofessionalism can mean. These peopleare passionate, dynamic, efficient and in-
novative, and eager to make a differencein the world. Repeatedly, they have provedthat small things do matter and can be-come socially significant while generatinga fair amount of personal income. Theyprovide models that show capable youngpeople that social entrepreneurship canoffer a career that provides both social andeconomic returns.
Providing the conditions for growth
But how many capable young people takethis path? Young social entrepreneurs –and there might be any number of these –are unrecognized as yet, both locally andglobally, and there is next to no support forthis group of potential changemakers.
It is young people who are both willing andable to become social entrepreneurs whowill trigger any movement, and it is the en-
vironment in which they operate that will
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either kill or facilitate their development.We believe there are four key elementshere: knowledge, community, finance andmentorship.
Knowledge for development
There are at least three critical kinds ofknowledge required to unleash the spirit ofsocial entrepreneurship which we believeyoung people possess:
• insight into social problems• examples of social entrepreneurs, par-
ticularly younger ones• knowledge of the social entrepreneur-
ship process
These three categories of knowledge rein-force each other. Young people need aknowledge of the world"s problems to ig-nite their passion; they also need insightinto development issues in order to de-velop their social enterprise ideas. Forthese ideas to be sustainable, a disciplinedmethod of enterprise management is re-quired. And, perhaps most important of all,
they need inspirational cases of young so-cial entrepreneurs who have made a sig-nificant impact.
A handful of examples
The number of these cases remains small,but their impact on the field has beengreat. An outstanding project aimed at dis-advantaged youth is Digital Divide Data (DDD) in Cambodia. DDD, founded by
young social entrepreneurs, creates non-profit data entry outsourcing centres thathire disadvantaged young people at wagesfar above local standards. The centres notonly provide vocational training and jobopportunities, but also scholarships foremployees to complete their education,health benefits and a safer working envi-ronment. DDD became financially sustain-able in only nine months and has to dateearned six-figure revenues.
Meal Exchange was founded by young so-cial entrepreneurs in Canada, has devel-oped an innovative programme by whichstudents are able to transform unusedmeal plan points into groceries, which they
can then deliver to local community or-ganizations and food banks. Meal Ex-change is run as a franchise, and currentlyup to 45 post-secondary and five secon-dary educational institutions across Can-ada have a Meal Exchange Chapter. It isestimated that in the year 2003 alone, over$260,000 worth of food was donated tocommunity organizations.
Mitra Technology Foundation is an initia-
tive in India that acts as an online volun-teer brokerage. Through its flagship pro-gramme, !iVolunteer", Mitra works withseveral other organizations across India tocreate volunteering opportunities for indi-viduals who want to make a difference. Todate several thousands of volunteers havebeen recruited.
Another youth initiative is Bangkok-basedTRN, which tries to find ways of using ICT
to cost-effectively empower rural communi-ties across Thailand. These young socialentrepreneurs have undertaken variouscommunity-based agro and developmenttourism programmes. Working in partner-ship with rural communities, its agro pro- ject has wedded traditional local and sci-entific knowledge to solve local problemsin relation to sustainable agriculture. Formany of the beneficiary villagers, food se-curity and real income have improved.
These farmers then become the rolemodel for thousands of others.
Spreading the word
Knowledge of these and other examplesneeds to be disseminated in such a waythat it appeals to a young audience: via aLonely Planet-like guide for young socialentrepreneurs, for instance, or throughmedia like MTV and other more seriousones featuring exciting examples of young
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social entrepreneurs as part of their pro-gramming.
Various online and offline tools could alsobe created to help young people manage
their social enterprises. These could rangefrom subjects like business planning tocomprehensive project management.However, the greatest challenge is in per-suading young people to contribute to theknowledge component. Perhaps theycould provide the necessary input throughthings like articles, journals or weblogs.
There is great potential to make social en-trepreneurship !cool" in the way that con-
ventional business entrepreneurship, par-ticularly startups, is. This could help attracthighly capable youngsters into the loop.
The importance of communities
Without communities, however, even thebest knowledge base will be of limited use-fulness. David Borstein, author of How toChange the World, emphasizes that one ofthe best ways of supporting young social
entrepreneurs is to bring those with similarpassion and insight together to share andcollaborate. Through the sharing of ideas,a community is created, and through thiscommunity information passes on, be-comes critically relevant, and can lead tofuture action.
Communities don"t have to be !local" in thegeographic sense any more. The internethas changed that. Now, communities can
be virtual, bringing together those withcommon interests and purposes, no matterwhat their location. In this way youth allover the world who are interested in socialentrepreneurship can share and crystallizeideas, gain support, mobilize teams, andeven collaborate online. Translatingthought into social action through commu-nities becomes exponentially rapid.
Take the case of TakingITglobal, it isprobably the world"s largest online com-munity of young people interested in global
development issues ranging from povertyto the promotion of healthcare. With morethan 54,000 members, TakingITglobal re-ceives more than 1.2 million hits daily. Itscontent and presentation attract young
people and reflect their energy and ideas.
Communities drive the collective discoveryprocess. Members don"t need to know orlearn everything to solve problems ormake necessary connections. As long asthe community is diverse enough, mem-bers can find solutions to problems bysharing their experience and knowledge. Ifa young social entrepreneur in Nigeria, forexample, needs a governmental endorse-
ment to implement her enterprise effec-tively but lacks the necessary contacts, avirtual global community of other youngsocial entrepreneurs could provide herwith those contacts.
Building movements through communi-ties
Stanley Milgram"s !six degrees of separa-tion" theory suggests that people are con-
nected by a chain of six people most of thetime: beginning from you and your imme-diate community, you can reach millions ofpeople via linkages spreading out fromyour initial contacts. For example, you andI might be separated by only three degreesof separation. You are reading this maga-zine because someone you know in thesocial investment community has recom-mended it to you. That person might knowthe editor, who might know us.
The most common problem in a networkedworld is locating the necessary contacts.Community-building is one key means oftransforming the global search into a moremanageable local one, but with globalconnections (for instance, figuring out whoamong your immediate community offriends has access to another set of credi-ble connections that could link you to, say,a donor agency or those with similar expe-rience in addressing social issues).
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The trick, therefore, is to build the networkof communities in such a way that youngsocial entrepreneurs can effectively link totheir desired community of contacts in rela-tively few steps. !Effectively" means that
the process must be two-way. Not onlymust young social entrepreneurs be ableeasily to track down the contacts theyneed, but there must be a willingness onthe other side to respond to them. Thus,not only do we need to facilitate youngpeople"s communities, we must also tapinto existing networks or create new onesof those who can help young social entre-preneurs. These supporting networks – ofdonors, media, consultants, or whatever –
must understand how they can help youngsocial entrepreneurs and be prepared todo this.
As with a physical community, the meansof integrating various groups within thecommunity must be tailored to each ofthem. For example, the core group of anyyoung social entrepreneurship movementwould consist of young social entrepre-neurs totally committed to their ideas,
while other interest groups within themovement might be more concerned withthe concept of social entrepreneurship ona more theoretical level. In building themovement, the needs of both groups mustbe taken account of, but in such a way thatthe groups reinforce each other.
Social movements can be seen as anevolving network of highly clustered com-munities linked to each other to achieve
common aims or express common values.By managing the formation process stra-tegically, the network can provide produc-tive interactions which are critical for thesuccess of young social entrepreneurs,allowing them to navigate the complexworld of development effectively with lim-ited resources and capabilities.
The challenge of resource mobilization
Even for fairly successful social entrepre-neurs, raising money and resources to
start a social enterprise from scratch is noteasy. For young social entrepreneurs it isalmost impossible. Generally, donors re-quire grantees to have a formally regis-tered organization. In most developing
countries, particularly India and Thailand,this requirement is often prohibitive foryoung social entrepreneurs because of theamount of !red tape" involved. Internationalfundraising involves even more regulatorycomplications. Unless this problem is re-solved, even the most energetic and inno-vative groups of young people will aban-don their social development ideas.
Apart from formal requirements on the do-
nor side, there is a problem of trust. In de-veloping countries, especially in Asia, ini-tiatives carried out by young people meetwith great scepticism. Social norms suchas respect for seniority reinforce this. Evenin the business sector, the phenomenon ofyoung super-successful entrepreneurs,common in the global North, is largely ab-sent in most southern nations. The financ-ing problem that young social entrepre-neurs encounter, therefore, reflects a cul-
tural bias against youth-based initiatives.
More than just money
Financing for young social entrepreneursrequires more than just giving themmoney. As with any start-ups, financing,mentoring and incubation are critical totheir success. Young people might be themost passionate, innovative and devotedgroup of people on the planet, but they"re
also the least experienced. Without goodmentors and an incubation service, theirfailure rate can be very high. Thus, en-gaged financing or venture philanthropy-like models are needed. Knowledge trans-fers from business start-ups to social en-terprise start-ups might be extremely use-ful.
However, young people also have an ad-vantage in resource mobilization. Youth isprobably the only stage of life when youcan knock on anyone"s door, from corpora-
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tions to UN agencies, and ask for help fora socially worthwhile project without beingaccused of having a hidden agenda. Oncethe barrier of mistrust is removed, olderpeople are often more than willing to put
their experience at the disposal of theyoung, and young people must learn tocapitalize on this.
Towards a self-sustaining movement
There are many initiatives which aim tohelp catalyse a young social entrepreneurmovement. One of them, the Youth SocialEnterprise Initiative (YSEI), is a GlobalKnowledge Partnership (GKP) programme
(see www.globalknowledge.org) driven byseveral of the younger members of thenetwork that focus on ICT for develop-ment. It is a joint programme developed bymembers across the globe providing anintegrated support mechanism for youngsocial entrepreneurs which includes infor-mation, community networking, financing/ resources and mentorship. It has gainedsupport from the Swiss Agency for Devel-opment and Cooperation and will be
launched very soon.
What we envisage is a self-sustainingprocess. Young social entrepreneurs" net-works will be catalysed by the diffusion ofinformation on youth-tailored social entre-preneurship, and the relationship of youngsocial entrepreneurs with each otherthrough the networks will make them moreeffective in terms of both resource mobili-zation and impact. Once more and more
talented young people are attracted andbegin new social enterprises, their interac-tions with each other through the networkswill generate new feedback, making thenetworks more effective and so more at-tractive to new social entrepreneurs. Theywill evolve without central control and willfacilitate the development of a youth socialentrepreneurs" movement.
These networks will provide the opportu-nity for every young person driven tochange the world. Because of the suppor-
tive environment they provide, social en-trepreneurship for the young will becomepossible. It may also become desirable. Ifthis happens, then the vision of social en-trepreneurship as a global movement
might become a reality. Who can say whatthe implications of this would be for thesurvival of the human race?__________________________________Sunit Shrestha is Director of TRN and co-founderof YSEI. ([email protected])S. Dev Appanah is an associate at TRN and copro-gram coordinator of YSEI. ([email protected])
