Let's Be Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurship

"The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know
and so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it."

Higher education institutions continue to be increasingly interested in examining how social entrepreneurship and community engaged approaches to education can work together. In light of the recent growth and interest in such programs, scholars and educators have called for attention to specific considerations when developing SE and community-based education, which can be summed up in three areas - pedagogy, relationships, and impact. The present essay builds on such propositions, and calls for a critically-orientated approach to SE, grounded in community engagement, collaborative dialogue among diverse voices, and a commitment to transforming oppressive structures.

Building upon recent developments in entrepreneurship education, we propose a novel framework for social entrepreneurship education founded upon a conception of social entrepreneurs as entrepreneurs embedded in competing institutional logics. Our model, in addition to teaching students "about" social entrepreneurship to allow them to acquire the knowledge and expertise required to successfully engage in social entrepreneurial activities, proposes to educate students "for" social entrepreneurship, by allowing them to acquire the skill of bridging three distinct and sometimes competing institutional logics: the social-welfare logic, the commercial logic, and the public-sector logic. To achieve this goal, we propose that social entrepreneurship education needs to make students aware of these different logics, to allow them to enact these competing logics and to enable them to combine logics when necessary to create innovative hybrid strategies. We explore how this overall strategy can be achieved by highlighting how various pedagogical tools can be adapted to contribute to each step.

The importance of sustainable education is increasingly being seen over the last decade. One way is by offering social entrepreneurship education (SEE): education that addresses engagement (empathy, compassion and care) and entrepreneurship. In a Dutch institute for primary teacher education, a pilot study was undertaken on SEE. Student teachers were instructed to design games that stimulate social entrepreneurship of children aged 8-12, and especially aim at enhancing empathy. Game designing appears to offer good opportunities for the enhancement of empathy. This study reveals what the students enrolled in the pilot (n=8) perceived to have learned about SEE, and in particular about the enhancement of empathy. The students saw a relationship between empathy, sustainability issues and SEE. They had the impression that certain game conditions, competences and teacher characteristics stimulated SEE and empathy. Game designing offered good opportunities to enhance empathy and helped the students to increase their understanding of SEE.

"The nascent field of social entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and attracting increased attention from many sectors. The term itself shows up frequently in the media, is referenced by public officials, has become common on university campuses, and informs the strategy of several prominent social sector organizations."

What does social entrepreneurship really mean? What does it take to be a social entrepreneur? This article provides answers.

The Impact Gaps Canvas came out of Daniela Papi-Thornton’s research and is a tool that can be used by anyone who wants to understand the landscape of a problem and possibly identify some paths to how they might contribute to a solution.