Monday, April 15, 2013

The Perfect Social Entrepreneurship Examples Involve Doing Business For The Benefit Of Others

By Camille Nicholson


When we think of entrepreneurs, we think of a businessman or a businesswoman and that the entrepreneur is in it for the profit margins, the bottom line, the monetary profit that he or she will make after all the expenditures are paid and so on and so forth. One rarely ever thinks of an entrepreneur who's not in it for the money, yet that is not entirely true. There are two forms of entrepreneurs, the business and social entrepreneurship examples .

This thinking is however flawed in a lot of ways as there are 2 types of businesses, business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. We shall explore social entrepreneurship more. Business entrepreneurs are in business for the financial profit that comes with running a successful business.

They are in it for the money and that is their number one objective. Social entrepreneurs on the other hand are in business for completely different reasons to that of business entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship is those businesses that spot a gap in the market and seize the opportunity to form a business out of it.

The only difference is that their business objective is to form a business that will bring effective change to their respective societies and ultimately their global environment. Examples of social entrepreneurship can be found in countries like South Africa, where each year South Africans celebrate and honour a female social entrepreneur in the form of awarding her the Shoprite Checkers woman of the year award. This event identifies a woman who through her own social and economic challenges, rises from the dust of poverty and lack and becomes self employed.

This prestigious event serves to celebrate and to say thank you to those women in the South African society who through their own lack and obstacles, rose to overcome their challenges and in the process enriched the lives of their communities thus playing a significant role in bringing positive changes. Ms Nyeleti Mushwana hails from Tzaneen in Limpopo and she single handedly built the very first black owned hotel in the province and she hired the uneducated poverty stricken members of her own community. She trained them on how the hospitality business is run, and she then became responsible for providing many homes with a better life as those homes now had a bread winner.

Another great and very prominent example of social entrepreneurship is a company called ASHOKA. Ashoka is a foundation that is dedicated to find, help and fund social entrepreneurs around the globe. Ashoka has thus far sponsored 2145 social entrepreneurs in 73 countries globally. Some of the social entrepreneurs sponsored by Ashoka have gone on to become great businessman which they in themselves have gone out to develop underprivileged communities around the world.

The Nelson Mandela's children foundation is a very popular form of social entrepreneurship. HIV and AIDS have unfortunately left millions of children orphaned in South Africa, and the foundation founded by the Republic's first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela is there to provide a loving, protective, conducive and secure environment in which children who belong to no one have found a place they can call home.

It is a social entity that provides a home for those children who have no one, and thus the Children's foundation provides alleviation for those kids who otherwise would have ended up being on the streets. Social entrepreneurship identifies the lack of service delivery of their communities in whatever form the lack comes in, and they go into a business that looks into delivering that services or services and thus improve their communities and societies at large. The world could do with more social entrepreneurship examples, but it's unfortunate that we don't identify the improvement of our societies as a business venture because we have all been brainwashed to identify entrepreneurship with money.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment