Imagine you are 20 years old and you are camping and hiking with your friends in northern Israel. Everything seems to be going fine until you hear a great explosion directly underneath you. You look down, stunned, and are horrified when all you see is a blood spouting from your legs and missing foot.
This is how Jerry White´s[1] story began. On his article “Explosive wisdom: What Landmines Teach Us About Liberation and Leadership”, he tells us: “This is a story of how I came to lead a small band of resilient survivors, activists and somewhat jaded politicians in a campaign to clean up thousands of minefields in Israel, Palestine and Jordan”[2], he tells. It is also a story of a change maker.
While social entrepreneurs share many of the features that characterize a traditional entrepreneur, there is one important distinguishing factor: a call for change making that burns inside. For social entrepreneurs innovation, profit, and even success only have secondary importance. Their main goal is to address a social problem and achieve positive impacts. Making a change is what defines them!
After all, what drives this need for change?
When discussing what drives these changes, David Bornstein [3] on his book “How to Change the World. Social Entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas” points out, “more people today have the freedom, time, wealth, health, exposure, social mobility, and confidence to address social problems in bold new ways”. Add to that the power and efficiency of communication and the increasingly globalized world, effective ideas for change can spread quickly. The world is demanding for changes, especially those that governments are not able to address. In this context, social entrepreneurs have taken the responsibility onto themselves to address social problems as if they were their own problems.
The rising Millennial Generation is passion-pleasure driven. For today’s social entrepreneurs the purpose goes beyond making money or realizing a promising career in a multinational company. That was their parent´s, the Baby Boomers, wishes and dreams. The new generation of entrepreneurs wants more. They look beyond. They want to work for a cause and a greater purpose. They want to feel challenged and completely passionate about what they do. Above all, they want to have fun! For them are all work and all play. They don´t care about stability. They are bold visionaries, and taking risks – especially if it is for achieving social impact – is a part of their daily lives. More than that, they want to be different by change making what they believe to be wrong and unfair.
And why is that? Where does this change making feeling come from? Social entrepreneurs tend to listen to the social call very early in life. Their “moment of obligation” usually comes from childhood and their ingrained sense of justice and equity guides them as they grow older. On this matter, Geraldine Hepp and Roshan Paul on their article “The Inner Journey of the Changemaker. How we manage ourselves and empathize with others are as important as professional management skills in creating social impact” explain that,
For some, personal motivation comes out of a single transformative moment. For others, it’s more of a slow burn, a growing conviction that changemaking is necessary to live a fulfilling life. Understanding your moment of “obligation” serves as a compass or a source of energy renewal during your life as a changemaker[4].
When they look for a role model or inspiration, change makers look from the inside out. By examining their inner selves, an inner wound is found that was unwittingly inflicted long ago and make this wound a gift to the world. Hepp and Paul, refer to this phenomenon as the “Wound-Gift Concept”[5], or the “notion that a major opportunity lies within our biggest personal challenges”[6].
In talking about a wound and the moment of obligation that it results from, most would assume that the legitimacy required to follow a social path comes from a great suffering, as Jerry White’s did after losing a leg to a landmine[7]. While stories of such loss do provide tangible motivation for starting a social business or a social project, nonetheless, legitimacy springs from many sources beyond experiencing excruciating physical and psychological pain.
If we think about it from a different perspective, the truth is that everyone has lost a limb at some point in its own life. Whether through the loss of a loved one, through separation, failure in business or through the struggle for self-acceptance, what really matters is what motivates social entrepreneurs from deep inside, even the burden of feeling too privileged in an unfair and unprivileged world. That feeling is all it takes to transform a wound into a gift to and start changemaking. Moreover, when today´s kids realized that there is no such thing as Superman or Spiderman, people like Jerry White and the Changemakers will become the new superheroes of this generation.
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Notes:
[1] Jerry White is a recognized leader in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines. A global humanitarian and Ashoka fellow, White is the author of Getting Up When Life Knocks You Down. At time of writing, White served as Executive Co-Chair of Abraham´s Path Initiative . In March 2012, he became US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict Stabilization Operations in Washignton, DC.
[2] WHITE, Jerry. Explosive wisdom: What Landmines Teach Us About Liberation and Leadership. – kosmojournal.org|spring.summer 2012.
[3] BORNSTEIN, DAVID. How to Change the World. Social Entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas. 2004.
[4] HEPP, Geraldine. PAUL, Roshan. The Inner Journey of the Changemaker. How we manage ourselves and empathize with others are as important as professional management skills in creating social impact. – Standford Social Innovation Review. Nov, 2014.
[5] Idem.
[6] HEPP, Geraldine. PAUL, Roshan. Social Change and the Shadow Side of Passion. – Standford Social Innovation Review. Feb, 2014.
[7] WHITE, Jerry. Explosive wisdom: What Landmines Teach Us About Liberation and Leadership. – kosmojournal.org|spring.summer 2012.
[8] Image borrowed from: http://jadisakti.com/motivation/6-wawasan-bagaimana-menjadi-seorang-pembuat-perubahan/