Saving the World One at a Time

[Will Marre]

Not too long ago I attended a luncheon hosted by Social Venture Partners, a San Diego based “Strategic Philanthropy.” It was very exciting. That’s because there is a positive invisible movement sweeping the world. It’s called Socially-Strategic Enterprise. Those are fancy words for harnessing the positive innovations and focused efficiency of free market business to do good. To solve the world’s problems. It’s big and it’s everywhere. Chrysalis Staffing, a temporary labor agency in L.A., hires homeless people to provide workers for their customers throughout the city. Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco operates many businesses including restaurants, a moving company, and a car repair shop paying and training pre-parole felon convicts as their workforce. They have changed the lives of 14,000 former criminal employees over the past 30 years. These are just two examples of a world-wide explosion of charities using business discipline to become self-sustaining. It’s not brand new. Remember the reason the Girl Scouts went into the cookie business was to train self-reliance, presentation skills, accountability, and build self-esteem. But today this model of creating a reliable income stream by developing a “mission centered” business is growing faster than the Arctic snow melt. The reasons are profound. We’ve got large scale, civilization ending problems rocking our entire world.

Modern life has become the 31 flavors of catastrophe. We’ve got terrorism, poverty, epidemics, corruption, environmental destruction, resource depletion, illiteracy, and continuous large-scale natural disasters (earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes…), so we’ve got to do something. Governments are principally self-sustaining bureaucracies that move slowly and often ineffectively at solving emerging problems. They have a hard time keeping bridges from collapsing. With few exceptions, businesses that operate on the old industrial model of capitalism are too focused on turning “things” into shareholders’ wealth to be effective at solving acute social problems.

So our times have called forth a new brand of citizen enterprise. They come in many forms. Non-profit and not-just-for-profit businesses are using social-entrepreneurship to take on just about every problem imaginable. One World Health is a San Francisco based non-profit pharmaceutical company working with universities to scale up low cost cures for the diseases of the poor. It’s run by executives with all the discipline of Johnson and Johnson. And the world’s youth are flocking to these enterprises. Socially-strategic non-profits are the fastest growing job market in the world growing at two and a half times the rate of private sector companies.

The biggest problem, however, is that most young citizens don’t know how to become social-entrepreneurs, so my friends and I at the American Dream Project are developing a fully accredited on-line academic course on the subject. We will be offering this course to high school and college students throughout the world. It’s going to be a multi-media banquet of documentary film clips, animation and student generated video. Each student will also join a local group to do a community-based project. Imagine millions of students doing innovative projects to improve their own communities each year. Well, that’s what we imagine! Right now we are working with GlobalGiving.org to raise the funds to get it launched. If you’re interested in seeing what we’re up to with Global Giving, click here.

Bottom Line, don’t think the only stuff going on in the world is what’s on the cable news. There are millions of people who wake up everyone morning to go to a job to make their difference. You don’t have to take a vow of poverty. Only a vow of meaning.

[Brad Ewing]

Well said Will. Do you think this Socially-Strategic Enterprise movement as you called it is being driven by the "31 flavors of catastrophe," and the fear it has placed in some of us? Or has the trend to act more responsibly always been there but is finally reaching critical mass?

[Will Marre]

Brad, thanks for your comment and great question. I think it's a little of both. Throughout history there have always been those extraordinary individuals who have done extraordinary things, regardless of the popularity or recognition. At the same time, sadly it seems so many of us are not inspired to act until something drastic happens that forces us to look at our lives and the world in a new way. I know in my own life, for instance, that I've always been conscious about my own decisions and responsibilities to the world, but 9/11 still had such a profound impact on me that I was inspired to do more both in my own life and on a larger scale. I also think the trend has taken hold because of the advances in communication. Through the media and internet, for example, we as consumers, employees, citizens, etc. are more aware of the what is going on around us and thus can hold leaders more accountable. This certainly is a trend whose time has come, and I am glad to be a part of it.

[Erle Frayne Argonza]

Copy, great reportage on social entrepreneurship and explosion of charities. Am very much interested in these kinds of updates.

[Teardrops*for*katelynn]

Where was America and the World while these abused children were dying?

What would you do?

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

This is suppose to every little girls life.

What happens when life is not like that?

What if your life is filled with constant abuse by the people who suppose to protect you?

For little Katelynn of Indiana, her life is filled with this from a father, stepmother and father's family; everyone but her the relatives that love her have been deined the ability to see her.

What happens when the police will not stop this?

Than try Child Protection Service, but they will not stop this either.

The next thing to do is go to the court.

What would you do if the Child Protection Services and the court helped the abusers hurt her?

The media might work but they ignore majority of average people.

In this search for help, several politicians ignored or said stop bothering them.

If these people will not help little katelynn of Indiana than who will?

Will this little girl have to pay the ultimate price for these adults mistakes?

Now...., what WILL you do?!

This is Indiana's Shame and these are Teardrops for Katelynn

referral sources:

www.courageouskids.net
Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation :: Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories Aired on PBS http://www.mkacf.org/BreakTheSilence.html
Breaking the Silence
http://sev.prnewswire.com/entertainment/20051019/CLW50819102005-1.html
http://www.tatgelasseur.com/pages/bts.html
Battered Women, Abused Children, and Child Custody: A NATIONAL CRISIS
http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/

Petition for Justice for Katelynn:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/5918.html

Don't let these little abused children be abused in silence anymore, please.
Tell someone!
Demand answers!
Demand the children's truth!
Above all break through this silence for theses abused childrens sake!
No adults rights is greater than the right of the child to be safe!