Social Entrepreneurship and the Power of Youth

The COVID-19 pandemic has made us all realize how interconnected our world truly is. The way we live, interact, connect has completely changed and the scale of change that we have witnessed in the past year has been unprecedented. In these testing times, Social Entrepreneurship rises to the surface.

Social entrepreneurship can be termed as the ‘quiet revolution. People are beginning to understand that we live in a world where both change and human interconnection are accelerating exponentially and anyone who has not mastered change-making is going to be left behind in the long run. One must strive to be a changemaker in an everything-changing world.  We no longer live in a world of repetition where you can learn a skill, trade, or profession and repeat it over and over. Instead, the rate of change and the extent of connectivity is increasing exponentially.

But who are changemakers? 

A change-maker is a person who can identify problems to solve, organize fluid teams, lead collective action, create an impact and then continually adapt as situations change. Changemakers are essentially innovators who focus on delivering social responsibility with their work. They instil hope amongst people, in perilous times. 

To foster growth, our society needs to be ordained by two major rules:

1. Redefining success for young people

As leaders of tomorrow, young people are pivotal to change and we have seen young people globally contributing to solving some critical problems in their communities. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2030 recognize that young people have a strong ability to bring about change and more than one-third of the SDGs focus area involves youth, explicitly.  

At this time we also need to deliberately focus on supporting girls and young women by encouraging a change-making and entrepreneurial mindset in them to enable more and more women to succeed and lead.

2. Mainstreaming Social Entrepreneurship & Change-making

Social entrepreneurship defines an approach through which individuals or groups work to implement solutions to combat social, cultural, or environmental issues. Embracing the culture of change-making is significant, as it helps individuals and organizations cater to the changing needs of society. In a country like India, areas like health care, employment and education among others need urgent attention. Social entrepreneurs identify a major pattern change that will serve the good of all and then make it happen. They are also powerful role models for other changemakers. Not only do they become changemakers, but they recruit others to the work and serve as role models for change-making. 

Youth and Community

Young people are more likely to be involved with their community as adults if they are involved by the age of 12-20. Children who have had these opportunities are significantly more likely to continue to lead and be active community members. Along with their drive to do good, young people bring a diversity of fresh perspectives and interpretations of the challenges and opportunities the world faces. They are a source of new energy and solutions to the persistent, wicked problems of our time. 

Young people are also the key to building movements that speed through our digital and physical worlds and shift cultures and attitudes in a manner and a pace never seen before. They are capable of ‘responding’ to the emerging needs in society but are also committed to ‘realizing’ a new future that paves the way for a regenerative paradigm of existence.

The highly unstable and recuperating world now needs our young people to lead and bring change. They need to give themselves permission to see a need, identify a solution, pull together a team and iteratively evolve the idea until one has brought change. 

The Author Dr Shruti Nair is the Director of Youth Years-South Asia at Ashoka.

Shruti leads Ashoka’s Youth Years program in South Asia. In her role, she leads the efforts to search, select and build a community of teen changemakers & institutional partners to help society re-imagine a world where every young person can grow practising to be a changemaker.