Social entrepreneurship: How can national and international institutions help?

  When asked about social entrepreneurship, I would primarily define it as an approach taken by individuals or organizations to meet the social needs not yet accomplished by governments or trade sectors.

Social entrepreneurship is a creative and effective phenomenon that experienced a remarkable growth over the past 15 years, which helped several countries leaders accelerate the process of solving the world’s most pressuring issues. 

In a world where more than 4 billion people lack access to critical financial services, supporting social entrepreneurship requires a holistic view of the origin of the proposed ideas: how they are ideas developed, how to make to make sure we chose sustainable ideas, and how to encourage social enterprises to come up with more ideas. Each of these questions challenges national, regional and international institutions to think outside of the box of providing venture capital.

In fact, social enterprises are sharing the same interest with those institutions. Their goals are mainly based on launching projects that are able to identify sustainable and effective solutions for social issues including education, health, human rights, poverty, security, employment, etc.

A number of successful social entrepreneurs have generated a better equilibrium by moving institutions and governments from the sidelines to a far more constructive place in the system. This new role influences the effective use of citizens’ taxes or, when talking about emerging economies, the development aid coming from wealthy countries, making government services more valuable. 

Now the question is: Is all of the effort made by entrepreneurs to include all stakeholders in the process enough?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. In order to implement their ideas; social entrepreneurs are still in need to have the support of more local and /or international investors who are interested in funding their projects, although in February 2004, entrepreneurial firms created about 70 percent of new economic growth.

Personally speaking, I think that raising the upcoming young generations on the culture of social entrepreneurship is essential to radicalize social change since early age.

Educational institutions for example can integrate social entrepreneurship on curriculums to promote positive social development through literacy standards and sustainable thought-provoking tasks.

That’s not all, funding and facilitating the organization of conferences and educational events in universities and youth complexes is an effective strategy to introduce key entrepreneurial skills like project managing, public speaking, and fundraising.
Innovation Exhibitions also grant the opportunity for all stakeholders to not only share success stories of social enterprises, but also let participants test out careers with a networking environment that paves the way for them to find jobs and internship opportunities.
Supporting social entrepreneurship can be achieved by launching competitions to challenge all potentials to creatively address the world’s toughest problems. That will therefore bring out the participants’ inner skills and motivate them to come up with the most concrete and sustainable ideas.
As an example, the Clinton Global Initiative, in partnership with the Hult Business School is launching its yearly social entrepreneurship start-up competition that gives a $1 million prize for the winners to launch their start-ups.

Policymakers too can empower local investments by facilitating access to loan funds, which will lead to growing the social venture. Indeed, this will not only encourage investments, but also empower the unemployed to help the community enterprise sector grow and succeed the challenges.

 Finally, it is undeniable that social entrepreneurship is one of the main contributors to the next social movement in our world. It is becoming an unquestionable initiator of the sustainable value of all of its stakeholders— entrepreneurs, workforces, investors and the wide community. That is why, it is becoming a must for all world leaders and institutions to support anyone with an idea that can benefit the society by integrating social entrepreneurship in school curriculums, organize more Innovation Competitions, and offer funds, guidance and trainings to both future and existing social projects.