Inevitably there will be times when you have setbacks or things don t go your way. Maybe you didn't get a job you thought you were sure to get. Maybe you lost a job unexpectedly, didn't win a contract, or lost a major client. Your car always seems to break down right after you've had some other unexpected expense. These kinds of situations immediately place us in crisis. They don t feel good, but sometimes they re what we need in order to grow. The beautiful thing about crises is that they force us to take a step back and reevaluate what s going on in our lives and rediscover what we truly want and need. When we get over that initial shock and feeling of disappointment, we might realize that maybe that job wasn't really the best for us anyway. Maybe, just maybe, that wasn't what you really wanted to spend your life doing. Maybe that friend was holding you back instead of pushing you forward. The way I deal with crises of these sorts is simple: If something doesn't go my way professionally, I try to create a situation that would be more rewarding than the situation originally planned. A while ago, I was offered a job that looked very promising. After I accepted the offer, they pushed the start date back three times, later informing me (via e-mail) that they wanted to bring me on in the near future but I should feel free to explore other options. I was extremely disappointed. I felt disrespected and angry, but decided to make the best of the situation and follow my dream of working internationally. I then flew to Santiago, Chile and had great professional and personal experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. Later, reflecting back on the original opportunity, I realized that working for a company that avoids a start date three times and then can t pick up the phone to explain the situation is probably not where I need to spend my time. Use setbacks as an opportunity to put your goals in order and act on them. In the moment, it s difficult to look at a setback as temporary, but they are. They happen to everybody. It s how you respond to them that will determine how they affect you.
The following is a list I pulled straight from the appendix of Global Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs To Know, by David Bornstein and Susan Davis. The list is a great starting point for anybody who wants to be involved in social entrepreneurship or social causes. Please feel free to review, share, and become involved. If there are any broken links, let me know and I’ll update the URL. Also, as always, feel free to add any sources you may be aware of that aren’t here.
- Alltop’s Social Entrepreneurship coverage
- Catalyst Fund’s Social Business Blog
- Change.org’s Social Entrepreneurship Blog
- CSR Wire
- Dowser
- E-180
- Echoing Green
- Evan Carmichael
- Fast Company’s “Ethonomics”
- Global Voices Online
- Good Magazine
- Greenbiz
- Grist
- MIT Innovations
- Net Impact
- NextBillion.net
- Ode Magazine
- Social Edge
- Social Enterprise Alliance
- Stanford Social Innovation Review
- Starting Bloc
- Treehugger green news
- University Network of Social Entrepreneurship
- World Changing
- Youth Social Entrepreneurs of Canada
“Only 2 percent of the world’s population receives a college education. If important ideas are going to spread widely, those who enjoy access must share their knowledge with the other 98 percent.” - David Bornstein & Susan Davis
I don’t believe a college degree is a prerequisite to developing important ideas, but I do believe that a college education helps facilitate important ideas. For those of us fortunate enough to have one, I think it is important to recognize the opportunity, take advantage of that opportunity, and use it to make positive impacts on those around you. When I first entered college, I was doing so because I was taught it was the key to unlocking a successful future: get a good job, make money, and retire. My experiences there taught me otherwise, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity. Thank you Southwestern University and the Dixon Scholarship program for funding my studies.
However, for every one of us who normally wouldn’t be able to attend college but was fortunate enough to do so, there are countless others who work just as hard, are just as smart, and are just as driven, but don’t end up with the chance to go. Programs like College Forward and others are helping underprivileged high school students plan for college by teaching them necessary skills, visiting colleges, and setting up interviews with current and former college students. What else can we do to help make the opportunity to experiences one of the world’s most prized institutions a reality for more people?
Social entrepreneurship is free enterprise’s answer to social issues and injustices, which, ironically, are largely a result of the failures of that very system. According to economists, a true free enterprise system is the efficient allocation of goods and services from producers to consumers. The problem is that many of these goods and services are allocated very efficiently to only a privileged few, rather than the masses. I’m not pushing a socialist agenda. I’m all for capitalism and free enterprise. I don’t have a problem with one person owning three homes while another owns one. But why should a child have to starve while I’m enjoying steak and shrimp on an expense account 800 miles from home?
Just yesterday a teacher friend of mine told me she saw a young couple across the street pushing two cats in a specially designed cat stroller. What does it mean when our educators are struggling to eat while others can cart around their feline friends in a stroller? Now, I have no problem with how you choose to spend your money, but what does it say about our value system when it’s okay, even expected, to put in sixty hours a week to make enough money only to make it back to work?
Social entrepreneurship brings business intelligence and socially conscious ingenuity together to effectively bring solutions to human and environmental issues that have thus far been largely ignored or have been ineffectively addressed, such as education gaps, health care, poverty, economic disparity, prejudice, and access to clean water and safety.