Social Entrepreneur

Social Entrepreneur is a person who pursues an innovative idea with the potential to solve a community problem. These individuals are willing to take on the risk and effort to create positive changes in society through their initiatives.

Examples of social entrepreneurship include microfinance institutions, educational programs, providing banking services in underserved areas and helping children orphaned by epidemic disease. Social entrepreneur aim not to earn a profit, but is to implement widespread improvements in society. However, a social entrepreneur must still be financially savvy to succeed in his or her cause.

A social entrepreneur is a leader or pragmatic visionary who:

• ·     Achieves large scale, systemic and sustainable social change through a new invention, a different approach, a more rigorous application of known technologies or strategies, or a combination of these.
• ·       Focuses first and foremost on the social and/or ecological value creation and tries to optimize the financial value creation.
• ·         Innovates by finding a new product, a new service, or a new approach to a social problem.
• ·         Continuously refines and adapts approach in response to feedback.
• ·         Combines the characteristics represented by Richard Branson and Mother Teresa.

For example social entrepreneur in Malaysia are Teach for Malaysia is an independent social enterprise with a mission to end education inequity in Malaysia. This organisation recruits, trains and support the country’s most promising future leaders, who teach as fellows in high-need classrooms all over the nation. They have over 200 fellows and alumni impacting more than 33,000 students in over 70 schools across 8 states in Malaysia. They hope that one day, all the children in Malaysia will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education and that is a hope we all share.