By Ramanuj Ghosh:
What is Social Entrepreneurship?
Social Entrepreneurship is the profession of enterprising the process towards bringing about major social changes in the society for the greater good of the society. Social entrepreneurs are the catalyst behind the change, challenging the status quo by extracting the unforeseen opportunities and changing the world for the better. These agents of change are actually filling the loopholes of the bureaucracies and the government.
What does a social entrepreneur do?
Social entrepreneurship as a career:
Social entrepreneurship as a career opportunity has grown in the recent years in accordance with the magnitude of problem faced by the whole nation which needs a sympathetic solution of realistic nature rather than false extravagant promises. India has one of the largest constituencies of poverty-stricken people where around 230 million people are suffering from hunger; 21 million children are suffering from malnutrition. So it provides ample opportunities for budding young talent in India to make a difference by investing in the social capital and solving the social evils which a corrupted bureaucracy has been completely inept to address.
Being a social entrepreneur is as lucrative as working at any high position in the public sector. As a social entrepreneur, a person creates his own niche and individuality by making differences in the life of those people who actually feel themselves as curse to be born as humans and they can bring smile to those faces who have forgot to smile forever and that is the best award a human being with holistic bent of mind can achieve.
Due to its nature of tapping untapped energies in the form of recognizing those people and communities who have not been touched with the magic wand of development, making social entrepreneurship is an exciting career option, with different and new challenges are faced everyday
How as a social entrepreneur you can make a difference:
As a social entrepreneur major differences can be made in the lives of the needy people by
- Social entrepreneurs provides people with jobs
- It empowers local communities
- It builds skills and capacity among communities
- It creates mechanisms of ownerships
- Most importantly, it gives people a sense of control over their destinies
A very good example of social entrepreneurship and a social entrepreneur is Grameen Bank of Bangladesh created by Mohd.Yunus as a micro-finance initiative towards providing economic independence to lower income group thereby making them masters of their own destiny. Or, for that matter, if we talk about another noble venture, empowering people and communities is the Grameen Danone Food, which is aimed at reducing poverty by providing business and employment opportunities for local people as the raw materials needed for production will be sourced locally. And the aim is to earn profit and invest that profit for further development of the communities involved with it. Even in India, social ventures like Teach for India, which aims to empower kids of poverty-stricken condition by educating them and turning them to future leaders, simultaneously motivates the young graduates to join this initiative by making it into a Fellowship Programme sponsored by Dell.
Institute Teaching Social Entrepreneurship: Centre for Social Initiative and Management is the lynchpin in India providing several courses of social entrepreneurship spread in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore of India. So people who are willing to make differences in the lives of people can also make a subject choice of social welfare at the College Bachelors and Masters level, and get a lucrative job where innovation, creativity and compassion matters rather than being a ruthless corporate robot.
Social entrepreneurship is a really prominent and viable career option, which can be just as financially-resourceful and interesting as any other main stream careers. So let’s be the change which people need by social enterprises and through social entrepreneurship.