(photo via KNOWN SUPPLY)
Building Upon a Lasting Legacy
A quick read through a number of articles on social entrepreneurship will allow you to identify the movement as one that is fragmented and not easily defined. All kinds of people from a variety of sectors — housed in both for profit, non-profit and hybrid organizations — all operate as “social entrepreneurs”. The range of social issues are as vast and broad as the entrepreneurs themselves. That being said, the common high-level understanding of a social entrepreneur is recognized as someone who is leveraging business practices in order to develop, fund, and implement solutions to social, cultural and environmental issues.
In my view, we are living amidst one of the great new eras of social entrepreneurship. Our unprecedented access to information, as well as our ability to travel has helped to build empathy and break down barriers of understanding (or should I say misunderstanding?) globally. This heightened and increased level of cross-cultural connection has driven entrepreneurs to seek out empowering alternatives to their business needs and they have the tools to make that a reality (a.k.a. the Internet). Additionally, shoppers are better equipped to research and understand the impacts of their purchases, thus they are becoming more mindful about what they buy.