Understanding social entrepreneurship - Global Ecovillage Network

Description of Challenge

Many of the institutions and processes that have grown up in our societies are struggling to meet
the new challenges that the world faces: climate change, an ageing population, the globalisation of
the economy, In particular, the everlarger scale upon which business is conducted means that
local communities often find it hard to ensure their own balanced and sustainable development.

“We started Ashoka here in India with a simple idea: that you needed social entrepreneurs to
deal with problems that don't fit the business paradigm" Bill Drayton

Solution

There are two main trends which offer the hope of rebalancing this trend and bringing more control
back to the local level. On one hand new digital technologies offer new and efficient ways through
which citizens can express their opinions and collaborate over long distances. On the other hand
the difficulty governments are facing in collecting taxes from transnational corporations, and
popular resistance to high taxation, mean that public authorities are seeking to shrink the state and
devolve more of the management of public services to the population through participation.

As the term is currently used, social entrepreneurship is not identical to social enterprise. The
European Commission’s definition of ‘social enterprise’ (which it uses interchangeably with the
term ‘social business’ has three criteria:

● a social objective
● limited distribution of surpluses
● participative governance involving stakeholders such as users and workers

The main worldwide support organisations are:
● The Ashoka Foundation, which aims to “make everyone a changemaker”,
● Also operating worldwide, the Skoll Foundation set up the Skoll Centre for Social
Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, and holds an annual networking event, the Skoll World
Forum, at which it presents awards to winners of its competition.

References
Ashoka Foundation: https://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur
Skoll Foundation: http://www.skollfoundation.org/
Impact Hubs: http://www.impacthub.net/
Social economy in the EU: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/socialeconomy/index_en.htm

Submitted by AEIDL