Social entrepreneurs are everyday people with ideas or businesses that deliver a social, environmental or community benefit. They often have a personal experience of the need they are addressing and many are from the communities they seek to serve and help. As such they are uniquely positioned to address some of our most pressing social challenges. Social entrepreneurs are passionate, driven and committed. They are motivated by an unmet need in their community or society more broadly and develop innovative solutions to meet that need. They use business not for the sake of profit only but to achieve a social or environmental outcome.

Blake Mycoskie is said to be a social entrepreneur since he established the company because once he traveled to Argentina in January 2006, he was struck by the country’s health and poverty problems and discovered that numerous children did not have proper footwear. Half of TOMS — the half in their Santa Monica headquarters and in retail stores on 5th Avenue — is entrepreneurship. The other half is charity. After five years of giving shoes, Blake was ready to address another need: vision. On June 7, 2011, TOMS debuted One for One Eyewear, which provides eye treatment, prescription glasses or eye surgery with every pair purchased. 

Thank you TOMS Shoes! That’s the voice from the hearts of us.