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Who is an Social Entrepreneur and what is social entrepreneurship?

Wikipedia says,

Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

 

What was once known to be a passion for celebrities is now turning out to be an entrepreneurship platform. Working for a cause and working with people who work for a cause is a trending scenario.

Typical traits of a social entrepreneur include being ambitious and persistent for tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Social entrepreneurs prefer to motivate people and society to bring in radical changes in the system by education the pros and cons of the current structure and thought process of the society.

The cause may range from avoiding communal riots to fighting terrorism by reinforcing steps which educate people against these social barriers. The idea is to help a nation to become more civilized and hence develop at a faster pace.

NGO’s are so far the best examples of existing efforts in this domain. A lot of them work for children, old age citizens, wildlife and women. NGOs like WildlifeSOS carry out drives to save the wildlife. Helpage-India aims to work for the welfare of senior citizens of the country. Breakthrough works for several social causes by means of campaigns like BellBajao.

There are more organizations which hire people for full time to help provide mid day meals in government schools. The idea is to work for the nation and society.

If you wish to experience more of what people have to say and how can they work for the society, you may want to participate in the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2009. The registrations are now open.

If you like to read more on social entrepreneurship, here is an assorted collection from the Print Room at Ashoka.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this and speculate the effect of such initiatives.

Image Credits: Carf

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