Renegade Social Entrepreneurship
December 6th, 2010
Curtis Sliwa (Centre)
The word entrepreneurship immediately brings forth the image of a keen business man looking to create an empire from scratch. But what about social entrepreneurs? The people who put in an equal amount of time and effort with a charitable twist. Social entrepreneurship is the grinding side of things, it doesn’t get easier in you’re a non-profit organization whose resources are spread thin as is. But what if instead of the structure coming first, the strategy, the organization of the organization, the service came first. Take New York’s Guardian Angels a security service for late night commuters started by social entrepreneur Curtis Sliwa. What started as vigilante later became one of the most well-known pedestrian security services world wide. What Curtis Sliwa and his friends did was what they considered the “right thing”, only it gained momentum. Mr.Sliwa took this momentum and consolidated it by registering the Guardian Angels as a legitimate organization. This empire from scratch was never meant to be an empire at all, social entrepreneurship by osmosis.