Inclusion, empowerment, and community engagement is being discussed in some quarters but not in many important areas in the social innovation space. One question is: WHO Gets to Be a Social Entrepreneur?. So far, my research indicates there is a wide demographic gap between who the founders of social enterprises are and who the clients are. There is a lot of talk around inclusion of community, but primarily at the client level, typically no discussion of inclusivity in starters and founders of social enterprise. In an ideal world, individuals and groups with lived experience of issues should be able to develop social enterprise solutions to those issues. Instead its individuals with different levels of class, race and gender privilege that are able to capture the resources to develop social enterprise. More broadly, there is a lack of equity in opportunity in starting and founding social enterprise. Would love to hear from anyone who lives in a community where the demographic of the social entrepreneurs reflects the demographic of the communities served by those social enterprises.
COMMENTS
BY Ushnish Sengupta
ON June 15, 2016 07:45 AM
Inclusion, empowerment, and community engagement is being discussed in some quarters but not in many important areas in the social innovation space. One question is: WHO Gets to Be a Social Entrepreneur?. So far, my research indicates there is a wide demographic gap between who the founders of social enterprises are and who the clients are. There is a lot of talk around inclusion of community, but primarily at the client level, typically no discussion of inclusivity in starters and founders of social enterprise. In an ideal world, individuals and groups with lived experience of issues should be able to develop social enterprise solutions to those issues. Instead its individuals with different levels of class, race and gender privilege that are able to capture the resources to develop social enterprise. More broadly, there is a lack of equity in opportunity in starting and founding social enterprise. Would love to hear from anyone who lives in a community where the demographic of the social entrepreneurs reflects the demographic of the communities served by those social enterprises.
BY rahu21
ON July 21, 2016 06:25 AM
You make it entertaining and you still manage to keep it smart.