Stumbling upon Social Entrepreneurship

A “social entrepreneur”

Some see it as almost a paradox, a contradiction that sullies the stereotypes of business men and women. These individuals, who are often depicted as profit-maximizing money-suckers, parading around downtown in suits with a coffee and briefcase in hand, are also the people working to blend the best of two worlds by mixing the values of financial and social returns.

While in secondary school and struggling to answer the pesky question “what do I want to be when I grow up,” I tried a variety of initiatives, from sports to clubs to extra-curriculars to figure it all out. One of these involvements was with Free the Children. After attending their conference 2010 We Day conference, I was inspired to make a difference. Along with other students at Hugh McRoberts secondary school, we co-founded a Me to We club at our school, and launched into holding fundraising events.

Me to We volunteers implementing the Halloween for Hunger canned food drive initiative – Photo Credits to Chung Chow, Richmond News

What I did not recognize at the time was that the organization I was working with was in fact a social enterprise, and it’s program was fostering social entrepreneurs. Although change is not always welcomed, I must agree with Abeer’s blog post on Tumblr, that performing business as a social entrepreneur is on the rise, and will do our world a lot of good.