Social entrepreneurship makes poverty an interesting enemy

there in the beginning, but when the story ends, they will last with you longer than your friends.
Poverty in its various forms has turned out to be a stubborn stain on humanity’s ambitions to live joyful and abundant lives. Poverty is as annoying to societies as flies are to an open wound.
William Pitt said “poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is annoying”. Its persistent stalking on humanity is what Christ referred to in Matthew 26, when he said, “the poor you shall always have, but you will not always have me with you”. Much like the enemy lasting longer than a friend. Universal understanding of poverty in today’s world is that it is the inability to secure, the basic necessities of life – food, water and shelter. My imagination takes me to an old widow somewhere in the cold environs of the northern hemisphere, who during the bitter cold temperatures currently being experienced up north cannot afford heating her apartment.
Perhaps this widow has in the past donated religiously to charities in order that the poor among the people in the southern hemisphere may have food or medicines. So is lack of electricity and heating a form of poverty? Such is the irony, metamorphosis and irritation of poverty. Hence, definitions and descriptions of poverty vary, with today’s younger generation believing that not having a phone with Internet is poverty. Most disturbing is our inability to see the true effects of persistent poverty as well as finding lasting solutions to the problem.
How one views and understands poverty, whether they choose to make it a number one enemy or a challenge that can be overcome, I believe makes the difference in finding appropriate solutions to this global menace. Sometimes, the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem can no longer persist.
This is what social entrepreneurship does. It identifies and solves social problems on a large scale. Just as business entrepreneurs create and transform whole industries, social entrepreneurs act as change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss in order to improve systems, invent and disseminate new approaches and advance sustainable solutions that create social value. Social entrepreneurs see abundance where everyone else sees poverty. So while everyone is running away from poverty or lack, social entrepreneurs embrace poverty in societies, not as a problem but a factor of production and thus making poverty interesting.
Unlike traditional business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs primarily seek to generate “social value” rather than profits. And unlike the majority of non-governmental organisations, their work is targeted not only towards immediate small-scale effects, but comprehensive, long-term change. The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognise when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. He or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.
Identifying and solving large-scale social problems requires a committed person with a vision and determination to persist in the face of daunting odds. Ultimately, social entrepreneurs are driven to produce measurable impact by opening up new pathways for the marginalised and disadvantaged, and unlocking society’s full potential to effect social change.
Change agent is how Ugandan Derreck Kayongo, a CNN Hero for the year 2011 is described. Kayongo fled Uganda during the reign of Idi Amin and became a refugee in Kenya, before proceeding to the United States where he is now a citizen. Through the Global Soap Project, Kayongo and his wife Sarah are together fulfilling a dream to help families in underprivileged societies improve their health and build better futures for their children and their countries.
His experiences in the refugee camps exposed him to first hand experiences of life without soap and how diseases quickly spread in that environment. The Global Soap Project (GSP) collects discarded soap from hotels and turns them into new bars. The organisation GSP recycles used soap from hotel rooms around the US and ships them to various organisations in many countries including; Kenya, South Sudan, Haiti and Swaziland.
The project realises that it is often the women and girls who are responsible for cooking, taking care of the little ones, fetching water and attending births. It therefore avails soap to enhance health and hygiene of women and girls among communities. GSP also provides environmental solutions. Where hotels used to throw away tons of barely used soap bars as waste, recycling means that less chemical waste is going into the environment.
Poverty was not there in the beginning of the world. Making an enemy out of poverty seems to have defined humanity in terms of “the have” and the “have nots”, rather than just being. Poverty is less of a distinct and tangible presence than it is more of a thought process. It requires the same humans, especially those who were once “stuck” in that challenge, to be creative and enterprising in an interesting way; so as to help others “unstuck” themselves, whether physically or psychologically.
What humanity seems to have done is to view poverty like this huge monster and a number one enemy. Rather than run towards it with tools to overcome it, we all choose to hide in our little corners hoping that poverty will not find us. Some who survived the clutches of poverty, hate it so much, that they themselves have become as vicious as poverty, and will run over and hurt whatever is on their way out of poverty.
They never want to be seen among the poor or be near anything that reminds them of their past experiences. Little do they know that in their hands are solutions to their “bad” experiences. The same grace that saved them, requires that they be compassionate and serve the least among and around them.
Through social entrepreneurship, tackling poverty can be made interesting. In that way, it does not matter how long it lingers, abundance will eventually overshadow it. Kayongo will certainly not eradicate all poverty in his home country Uganda nor in Kenya where he was once a refugee. Neither will he eradicate poverty in Africa, nor stop the famine in the Horn of Africa. But one thing for certain is that Kayongo has made his mark within his limits to provide a solution.
Rather than take a gun and fight off effects of poverty, he chose to use his God given talents and gifts to wade in shortages of soap and make it interesting for him, Sarah his wife, all the volunteers and hotels who support the Global Soap Project. A lesson for us all is that the best solution to a challenge comes from those who have passed through it. If we all view ourselves as change agents, then we can choose to provide solutions rather than perpetuate problems by hurting others.