How to Change the World
by David Bornstein
Buy on Amazon"What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up - and remake the world for the better." "How to Change the World tells the stories of these individuals - many in the United States, others in countries from Brazil to Hungary - providing an In Search of Excellence for the nonprofit sector. In America, one man, J.B. Schramm, has helped thousands of low-income high school students get into college. In South Africa, one woman, Veronica Khosa, developed a home-based care model for AIDS patients that changed government health policy.…
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"One of the revolutions of the last ten or 20 years has been the rise of social entrepreneurship. This is beginning to bring the same kind of vision and efficiency into the social sector and to do-gooders as has traditionally existed in the world of business. I think David Bornstein has chronicled that rise of social entrepreneurship better than anyone. He also has a follow-up book, with Susan Davis, from Oxford University Press, called Social Entrepreneurship . It’s a much shorter book that’s also good. But How to Change the World really is the Bible for do-gooders and it’s just a terrific book. A social entrepreneur is somebody who, like a business entrepreneur, has a new idea to solve a problem out there. But instead of trying to maximise profit, this person is trying to maximise improvement in the social condition. So, for example, one social entrepreneur that I know of was trying to address the number of women dying in childbirth in Africa. This person is an ob-gyn, so you would think she would immediately look at medical intervention. But she noticed that one of the big problems is that hospitals don’t have reliable electricity and you can’t do a C-section in the dark. So she ended up providing solar-powered surgery lights to a bunch of hospitals in Africa. It was very cheap and because it’s solar powered it also tends to be reasonably sustainable. The result has been that it saves lives, very cost effectively, in those hospitals."
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