Though social entrepreneurship is an increasingly trendy idea (thanks to organizations like Compass!), by no means is it a new phenomenon. To borrow an example from my seventh grade history textbook, Jane Addams’s Hull House in 19th century Chicago was a pioneering example of social entrepreneurship, founded on the idea of encouraging the disadvantaged to invest in their own community.
From its founding, Hull House was a community of women providing social and educational opportunities for working class immigrants in Chicago. The House held classes in literature, history, art, domestic activities (such as sewing), hosted free concerts, offered free lectures on current issues, operated clubs for both children and adults, and provided job training for community residents. By partnering with the community on the design and implementation of programs intended to enhance and improve opportunity for success, Hull House had a much greater impact than the well-intentioned but ultimately far less effective charity efforts of its contemporaries.
Jane Addams interacting with community members at Hull House in 1934.
One of my favorite social entrepreneurship organizations today is the Barefoot College, located in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India, which recently won Nicholas Kristof’s Half the Sky contest through the New York Times. Though located in the mountains of Northwest India, over 9000 miles away from Hull House, the Barefoot College is governed by the same founding principle that inspired Jane Addams: the conviction that solutions to a community’s problems lie within the community.
The only prerequisite to enter the Barefoot College is that there are no prerequisites. The College picks the poorest of the poor and trains them to be engineers of progress. Founded on the principle of self-reliant learning, illiterate women are plucked from the most remote corners of India and are trained to install solar panels or build water pumps. By equipping these women with skills indispensable to their communities, the College enables them to be both entrepreneurs and agents of social change in their communities. Read this PBS report for more information.
Solar engineers from the Barefoot College in India.
~ Vail Kohnert-Yount, SFS 2013
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