Friday, May 22, 2009

When Success Means Being Obsolete




I attended a seminar in Post Graduate School of Ateneo and there I was introduced to the new concept of Social Entrepreneurship a field filled with happiness and wealth; a new trend of Entrepreneurship in the world.

There are two types of SE (Social Entrepreneurship); one is Profitable SE and that’s where you can empower the society as well as earn however the earning may not be much compared to some other entrepreneurial businesses (yet for some created abundance through quantity of their services) and the other is the Non-profitable SE. the latter focuses on the services surrendered to community in the point that their basic needs be satisfied through their personal sharing and efforts.

Example of the first can be FedEx, when they started to print the resume of unemployed who were seeking for job in the US. Or some companies that print the advertisements on the paper cups for very least amount of money. In both cases you can see empowerment of people or micro companies through services of big companies.

The sound example of the second type in our country is Gawad Kalinga started from a non-profitable organization of Couples for Christ; sheltering the homeless people of urban areas. They simply make residents of such areas build their own real houses with the help of GK People sponsoring the materials. Note that their services doesn’t end by turning over the houses but they educate the people on how should they maintain and keep the environment and the new houses clean and neat to provide the healthy and good looking environment. That is the more important factor, because after the GK people leave the area, the people would know on how to keep such a good environment and maintain it.

In both forms of SE, the service surrendered to community solves a problem and turns it into opportunities for both the mastermind behind it and the target community.

The success of these entrepreneurs is measured by the absences; if they are not around and yet their services or products keeps empowering the community then they are successful attaining their objectives.

Unlike some other organizations where they make the community dependent to their services (even if that is for free) the SE makes sure his system makes the community independent in solving their problems.

Therefore at the counterpart of some charitable organizations where they keep feeding the poor the fish, and even more than teaching them how to fish (which just save one generation on surviving), the SE makes sure to come up with a System that resolves the problem of the community where makes the fishing easier for them no matter how many generations.

And by looking at the people of target community who are empowered already and can focus in solving other problems comes the happiness and sense of fulfillment. Isn’t happiness and fulfillment what we seek in our life, then why not taking action in attaining it? Be the Social Entrepreneur who solves and empowers, that even if obsolete, people would remember him/her as a hero. Be the dream person whom you always wanted to be. Start building yourself today.

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