The Sauder School of Business is fairly well known for its high quality faculty and prestigious alumni, but it is also proficient in an area that sometimes goes overlooked – that of social entrepreneurship. Sauder is home to the Arc Initiative, a program focused on providing experience to students and information to struggling entrepreneurs in economically unstable countries, and it is through this program that students and faculty are effectively changing lives. Society can tend to view business in general as a rather selfish sector of the world, filled with people who are merely concerned with their own bottom line, but social enterprise is working to change that. Business is in fact a wonderfully diverse and practical realm that allows individuals to have a profoundly large scale impact both on other individuals and on society as a whole. Learning the principles of business teaches one about how the world works; both economically and morally. Entrepreneurship is helping people come up with creative ways to support themselves, their families, and their communities; and the Arc Initiative is assisting these individuals in the achievement of their goals. By providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in their chosen businesses, Sauder is giving them control over their own lives. And this is merely the beginning. Social entrepreneurship is a growing trend, and benefits all those involved.

Many of you are familiar with TOMS, the shoe company that donates footwear to underprivileged children with every pair purchased; or with Product RED, which is affiliated with hundreds of companies and products and donates a percentage of all profits to AIDS research. These and many others are the sorts of companies and initiatives that are worth devoting your life to, and the ones that are changing the world.