Social Entrepreneur

I was amazed with the amount of information I found on social entrepreneurs when I did my research through google.com. It seems that the topic has caught everyone’s attention because many had been interested to contribute and write about out. Many people have discussed the topic explicitly and have tackled many aspects thoroughly.

I went through many web sites, read amazing stories, and I was so much inspired by those people’s great jobs. It just reminded me of how much I was and still concerned about the case of “reject individuals” if I can call them so, back home. Those individuals were once upon a time leading their lives normally as others, but because of certain reasons or maybe wrong decisions they have taken, they ended up in jails or became drugs addicts. Those people found themselves aliens within their own community; they can’t re-integrate themselves, and others are always dealing with them in inferiority, in another way, they are totally rejected by their own community. As a result of this behavior, those rejects, go back and commit more offenses, maybe at a higher degree than the first time.

After doing my research on social entrepreneurs, I thought, well for sure a solution can be found to help those people and re-integrate them back in the community. Those people can be productive, and some of them are very smarts, their talents should be utilized effectively for communities’ advancement in various aspects. I thought, crimes will always exist, drugs will always remain as a lure for young people, mistakes will always be committed by individuals, so the solution proposed has to be a sustainable one that reflect back positively not just on few of those “rejects” and their community, but rather on a larger scale where the solution could be copied and improved somewhere else, in different part of the world. That’s the aim, to help all the “rejects” worldwide and transform them into productive individuals instead of sending them back to jails or drugs addiction.

Now let’s look and analyze the term “social entrepreneur” more carefully. Big names like Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King to more contemporary personality like Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (vice president of UAE and the president of Dubai city) who has sponsored the huge project “Dubai Cares” recently, to help and educate more than a million poor children worldwide. Are these big names could be identified as social entrepreneurs? Those people have inspired millions around the world, help nations to survive and get their rights back, cant we call them social entrepreneurs? The answer is NO they are not social entrepreneurs, they are “social activists” and in case of Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, he is providing amazing social services.

It’s very essential to define correctly the term “social entrepreneur” and distinguish it from the terms “social activist” and “social services”.

First let’s define the word “entrepreneur”. The entrepreneur is the person who has the ability to think out of the box and has a great determination to create something new. The entrepreneur is inspired to change the unpleasant situations and thinks creatively by developing new solutions that might cease the existing ones. Also, the entrepreneur takes direct action once he is inspired by an opportunity and shows signs of courage through the process of innovation. In addition, the entrepreneur takes the burden of risk or failure and most importantly, he or she has the determination to force his creative solutions through to execution and adoption.

And “Social entrepreneur” is the person who has all the entrepreneur’s characters mentioned above mixed with the aspiration for values and the eagerness to transform the benefits discovered to the targeted people within the society or to the society as a whole. Generally, social entrepreneur targets the underserved, neglected, or highly disadvantaged population that lacks the financial means or political power.

“Social service” provision means when an individual or an organization identifies an unfortunate situation and set up a program to address it. The social services never escape out of their limited frame as their impact remains constrained. In another words, it stays limited to a local population.

“Social activist” is the motivator of an activity who is as well the unfortunate who is suffering from a problem. The social activist attempts to create change through indirect action, by influencing other and they may or may not form organizations to progress the changes they seek.

Now by defining these terms, I believe the confusion will be eliminated between them, and “social entrepreneur” will be better identified, though all of them are considered as noble jobs.

The question is why so many are interested on the social entrepreneur topic? Is it a trend or a real shift to corporate responsibility?

Generally from my point of view, people might be mixing up between the terms mentioned above, and they are unable to draw the line between the social entrepreneur boundaries and the other terms boundaries, therefore, they identified so many works as social entrepreneur and in reality its not.

In my opinion, the interest taken by so many could be a hybrid interest that made of trend and corporate responsibility. Think of it, companies or organization could gain a great reputation by being identified as social entrepreneur which most probably reflect positively on their net income by end of the year, not necessarily from the underprivileged people but the normal customers (e.g. pharmaceutical companies). So as you can see, these companies are trying to help the underprivileged plus they are gaining the fame which lead to increase their revenue from a different source.

That doesn’t mean that there are no genuine social entrepreneurs, to the contrary, I am sure that there are many out there who truly interested on helping others and assisting them through to lead a better life.