The term social entrepreneur refers to a person who works to solve specific social problems through a revolutionary and pragmatic enterprise. While an aid worker might metaphorically teach someone how to fish—that is, teach skills that a person can profit from—social entrepreneurs “will not rest until they have the fishing industry,” according to the person who made the concept popular, Bill Drayton. Social entrepreneurs tend to establish their own new context, like an organization or movement, and therefore bypass the aid bureaucracy most aid workers operate within. Zach Hunter, a student who founded a modern slavery abolitionism campaign, is an example of an American social entrepreneur.
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Social Entrepreneur Term Timeline in Half the Sky
The timeline below shows where the term Social Entrepreneur appears in Half the Sky. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...Chains (LC2LC) to fundraise for modern slavery abolitionism. He belongs to the recent surge of social entrepreneurs . Bill Drayton explains social entrepreneurs as people who do not simply work within current...
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Women’s emancipation would be much stronger, Kristof and WuDunn argue, were it backed by more social entrepreneurs . Advocacy beyond the UN and aid bureaucracies is necessary, they write—for instance, investment in...
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Sunitha Krishnan is one such social entrepreneur . A social worker in Hyderabad, India, she has a small stature and a detached...
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Chapter 9
The authors describe Sakena as, “one of the great social entrepreneurs of Afghanistan...and constantly in danger,” receiving daily death threats and changing bodyguards frequently. Although Sakena...
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Chapter 11
...but the money never got down to the villages.” She studied the work of another social entrepreneur and returned to Lahore to start Kashf (which means “miracle”), where she found that women...
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Through Bill Drayton’s organization, Roshaneh became an Ashoka Fellow and networked with other social entrepreneurs . In addition to lending small loans, Kashf accepted deposits so that women could build...
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