Social entrepreneurship means dirty work to me. It's the work that need to be done but that very little people are willing to do. Scholarship is asking the tough questions and social entrepreneurship is having the willingness to stick your neck out in order to try to solve those questions. Social entrepreneurship, as cliché as it sounds, is being the change you want to see in the world. It's having the freedom to advocate for something the way you want and take control of your own representation in a particular market or community. Social entrepreneurship is about understanding — understanding the political, cultural, and economic context of the problem they are trying to solve.
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“So Detroit is like an Instagram paradise”. This is the way my cousin paraphrased my five-minute monologue regarding the beauty, intricacy and meaning of Detroit’s art collection. For those who speak in Instagram, yes it is an Instagram paradise. You will have a backdrop of art that can complement any outfit, mood, and filter you want. In essence, my cousin understood the surface level of what I meant. But my description of the meaning of art seemed to blow right past her. To understand the meaning of art, you need to understand Detroit’s history.
Detroit’s motto is Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus-“We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes”. In the 1750s, Detroit was one of the wealthiest fur trading cities in the world. In 1805, the whole town burned down. It re-invented itself and found a niche in ship-building and lumber until the Great Depression destroyed both industries. Once again, Detroit pursued and emerged as the historic heart of the American automotive industry. Fast forward to 2011, and Detroit was declared bankrupt. Now, Detroit is starting to rise out of its abyss and become a technological, art, and social entrepreneurial city. Most importantly, it has grown from the passion of young locals and outsiders seeking for a better tomorrow. In many ways, these driven people have found their niche in the emerging Detroit market by getting involved in social entrepreneurship. These ventures focus on addressing and eradicating issues still systemic in Detroit through collaboration and self-expression. One of the most famous examples is the Heidelberg Project. The Heidelberg Project was made by Tyree Guyton as a political protest for his cause. After the 1967 police riots, communities that participated stopped getting supported by the city. Tyree wanted to bring attention to the fact that his neighborhood had been stripped of even the little safety, value, and support it had. As a response, Guyton took ordinary items like toys, clothes, and appliance in his vacant inner cities and turned it into an art project stretching blocks-long. Empty houses and lawns became the new canvas for polka dot contraptions and symbolic art. He used the outskirts as a canvas to speak his mind and bring awareness to the conspicuous issues in neighborhoods that were not being addressed. Utilizing his nonprofit as a vehicle for change and the art as its motor, Guyton art became a constant reminder to Detroit that time is ticking and cities are deteriorating. Guyton used art to support his social organizations desire to improve the lives of people and neighborhoods in lower economic cities. So many nonprofit organizations in Detroit are engaging in art to story tell about their past and hopes for a better future. Social ventures are focusing on eradicating issues in the world so that growth and prosperity can occur. These organizations complement both the public and private sector. The private, public, and social enterprises are important because each focuses on an important factor to grow a city. Private entities attract wealth and people in order to grow. Their medium is the economy. Public entities manage the distribution of wealth and people. Their medium is the government. Social entities fix the cracks in a foundation so that an economy can be well-managed and further grown. Their medium is art. Detroit’s art not only paints a canvas of what the past was like, but it also both carves into buildings what the city is now and sculpts what the city can become. At this rate, Detroit’s trajectory looks as if the city will become a beacon of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurs are those who take initiative and use profit models to help alleviate certain social and environmental issues. Neither a for-profit company nor a non-profit organization, social enterprises are different because they have social missions and can support their own financial need. While making profits is certainly not the primary goal for social enterprises, the fact that they can serve the society while making money always fascinates me a lot. Compared with traditional non-profits and philanthropic organizations, social enterprises are more independent and sustainable. In order to acquire the independent financial source, social entrepreneurs have to be innovative enough so that they can find a successful business model that both produces profits and benefits the society.
In the belief that the business model is the core of a social enterprise, I’ve always been curious to learn about different social missions and how social entrepreneurs design business models to accomplish their missions. My experience in Detroit so far has definitely complemented my macroscopic understanding of the social entrepreneurship discussed above and satisfied my curiosity. During my daily job in Detroit Future City, I learned about a website called LOVELAND Technologies (its URL is pretty interesting: https://makeloveland.com). It’s a social enterprise to me because it’s a profiting company and it fulfills its social mission. Founded in Detroit, this company aims to make information about property in Detroit more transparent and help alleviate the blight cycle, which has been one of the most serious social problems in Detroit. In order to achieve this social goal, they provide online maps for the public to understand the current situation of tax foreclosures as well as an ongoing survey so that they can gather more real-time data from the public. They also work with a variety of stakeholders, including governments and community partners, to “gather and present information about property in clear, actionable ways”. As years went by, it has grown into a bigger business and now provides abundant information about property for the entire country. With its lots and lots of community-level data points, it has benefited many more community organizations nationwide, not only limited to those in Detroit. This is an inspiring example to me because it shows me how important the entry point to a social problem is. LOVELAND Technologies connects tightly with the social problems Detroit community is facing and develops into a larger company that serves many communities beyond. Below is a map of Duke’s property in Durham by using LOVELAND’s online tool: I promised myself countless times in life that, whenever I had a blog, I wouldn't be one of those people that publishes something new everyday, when in fact there's little of this new content that can actually be of any interest or use to the audience. I was wrong. Detroit is this living, breathing organism that completely shatters your way of seeing the world and redefines everything and everyone that becomes a part of it. You see people who came from the most unfortunate backgrounds who fought through anything to create companies not aimed at generating money, but rather helping the same communities they came from; artists who lack any sponsoring or formal training, but who dedicate their lives to making decorating the walls and streets of Detroit; homeless people who will do anything to make you smile through a hard day in the city. And, in the middle of one of the most genuine communities in the world, raw as it is, you can find this writer that speaks to you right now, someone who jumped into this living form thinking she could significantly change and improve anything in it. Again, I was wrong. The world needs to see this, to feel it – and everyday I can think of a thousand ways I can, and should, show this to the part of the world I know – my family, friends, readers like you. And although I could write at least once a day about my experience in Detroit, for the majority of the past two weeks I could not tell how I could possibly help in any way this community, It definitely isn't my first time working on a corporate environment, or my first experience with social enterprises, as the founder of two myself. What is anyone even getting from my time here?
To be honest, I still don't know the answer to that question. Even though I love my work at Build Institute, I found it hard, initially, to see its real impact, if any, in the broader Detroit reality. At every single moment of my day, including the weekends, I'm working on creating new courses for Build, investigating the realities of its students, attracting new entrepreneurs to become a part of the Institute through the events it promotes across Detroit, trying to somehow quantify and analyze the impact of this organization in the lives of so many Detroiters. I'm not directly changing the bigger picture, but rather building with care various tiny pieces that make some individual realities better. And these small changes, the way I see it, are what making the social entrepreneurship we do here so meaningful. Differently than any other experience I had before, we are building a better future by embracing the reality as it is, from the inside, rather than coming up with some revolutionary solution to solve problems we have never really experienced. We are humbling ourselves through every step we take, challenging our vision of world on every time we go out in the streets and see firsthand the unbelievable innovation that dominates the lifestyle of this city, giving a voice to ordinary stories waiting to become extraordinary. We thought we were changing the world by coming here. In reality, our world is changing because we are here. Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School describes entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled”. In other words, an entrepreneur’s reach exceeds their grasp—their prospects are not limited by what resources and frameworks have already been laid out. Unlike business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs can extend their reach even further, unbound by the bottom-line of generating profit. These past two weeks in Detroit, I have seen social entrepreneurs uncovering untapped potential all over the city. Many sectors and ventures in Detroit have been deemed hopeless or a waste of time, but thankfully there are many social entrepreneurs out there who are giving Detroit a chance because of a belief in a better Detroit that, right now, is very difficult to see. Last Monday, I started my week by attending the opening and ribbon cutting of the Spirit of Detroit Plaza. The Plaza was not an easy initiative to execute and was not easily accepted since it closes a major traffic flow spot on Woodward Avenue, but Mayor Duggan, Downtown Detroit Partnership and Bloomberg were able to see the need for a public plaza as a space for locals to gather near the riverfront. The vision had so much promise that Bloomberg sent over the woman who coordinated Times Square in New York City to help execute the project. Even at the opening ceremony, I could feel how powerful this gathering space would come to be in the community; in less than an hour I got to see the most exciting marching band performance I’ve ever seen, traditional Mexican dance, and local artwork under my feet in one place, standing in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue representing the diverse city. I also get to see the bold, visionary work of social entrepreneurs everyday while I’m sitting at work. I have the unique opportunity of being physically stationed at the (unofficial) Welcome Center to the city. Detroit Experience Factory, with this Welcome Center and its tour programming, is giving the city a chance that even the city government was unwilling to give since the needs of making people feel welcome in Downtown Detroit go far beyond just providing maps and brochures. The variety of people that walk in the door throughout the day is astounding. Within 20 minutes, we had a couple all the way from Glasgow, Scotland come in asking for recommendations of museums to visit on their last day of their trip, a homeless man come in for an escape from the heat and a glass of water, and a woman walking back from lunch who thought she was being followed and wanted somewhere safe to wait. DXF is equipped to accommodate each need and make every kind of person in Detroit feel welcome, even though there is no streamlined, businesslike way to approach it. It takes social entrepreneurs taking these leaps of faith to get Detroit out of a rut. I had this narrow idea that social entrepreneurship had to be a business with the mission of solving a community problem. I never imaged the risk that went into this and that it didn’t have to be completely business oriented.
This summer, I was placed at Street Democracy. The president and lead attorney, Jayesh Patel, advocates for rehabilitative sentencing instead of paying hundreds of dollars in traffic fines that only contribute to one’s homelessness problem. This alternative sentence may include getting counseling or taking anger management classes, regularly volunteering in their community, or enrolling themselves in various types of job training. This innovative way to better society and prevent homelessness from the front end is the new view I have for social entrepreneurship. After hearing many success stories and incredible statistics, I added “solving societal problems at the root” to my social entrepreneurship definition. Although the past few cases Jayesh and Street Democracy has taken on have occurred after their clients have gathered thousands of dollars in traffic fines and court fees, they have just started a pilot program at Hamtramck 31st District Court. My partner, Aaron DePass, and I had the opportunity to accompany Jayesh and his partner, Charles Hobbs, to their first day working in the Hamtramck courts for this initiative. We conducted the preliminary interviews and noted their income levels and housing situations to see if they may be eligible for the rehabilitation program. The case was then handed over to Jayesh, where he made the decision if they fit the program’s client profile. There was one man who had a low paying jobs, had a few personal issues he was dealing with, regularly volunteered in his community. He watched over the kids’ park to make sure they were safe, as the park was not in the best area. The mission of the program Jayesh is implementing would show the judges that instead of this man paying hundreds of dollars in fines and making his living situation worse, he would sign up for counseling, enroll in job training to earn a higher wage, and continue to regularly volunteer in his community. This positive alternative will allow him to be his better self in the community. It was incredible and heartwarming to witness this and see how grateful and excited for this possibility to become a reality. Post 6-months of graduation from the Street Democracy program, 97 percent of graduates had stable housing, 91 percent had stable income, 90 percent had no contact with the criminal justice system, and 100 percent had no new misdemeanor or felony charges. In addition to helping these people, Jayesh estimates the program has saved taxpayers $75,000 - $150,000 by from reduced crime rates and combining cases into single settlements. This is just in the five years Street Democracy Outreach Court has been running. As I think of this new definition of social entrepreneurship for me, I try to put together why I had a business oriented view of it in the first place. Maybe I was biased because I think strategically in a business way, and never thought you could attack social problems from a legal direction. Pictured below: Jayesh Patel, president and lead attorney. Always keeping the work place fun and interesting! The end of the first week of work left me with many questions. It is not my first time working in a business environment, but it is my first time working with such a strong mission. When I got placed at the Detroit Food Academy I knew that I would have had the chance to have a small impact on the struggling youth of the city. But, in total honesty, by the end of the first week, I started questioning whether my presence was benefitting the community around me. The days are the office are very fulfilling. At every instant I feel that I have something to do. Designing their new website, contacting potential clients, editing videos and working on their marketing strategy keeps me busy even after the mandatory 9 to 5. But is all of this work benefitting the youth? Am I doing what I came here to do, having an impact on the community? A week has passed and the work got more intense. After having had a chance to meet personally the people that are supported by DFA, everything seems a little more clear to me. Social entrepreneurship is about doing your part, not everybody’s part. The work that before I thought was not impactful enough, I now realize it is part of a broader network. A network of people like me, young and determined, that push themselves for goals less concrete than profit. It is true, I am not impacting the youth of Detroit, but my organization and many other non-profits are. Social entrepreneurship is not made for people who focus only on the small picture. I think, and hope, that at the end of this program we will be able to look back and realize that we are now part of something bigger than us. If you are curious to see what DFA was up to this week, please check out this video!! https://vimeo.com/221790010 Detroit is a cit abuzz with activity. There is a cohesive spirit of innovative enterprise to solve the problems that the people of this resilient city have been facing. It is “the hotbed of social enterprise”. However, even after spending 2 weeks in an environment so alight with new ideas I am unable to point to one concrete definition of social entrepreneurship. From what I have been able to glean so far, social enterprise is more than just a form of business - its more of a lifestyle, a change of mentality.
For many people this starts with the simple act of saying no. No to being satisfied with their current situation, no to just banal complaining and no to being afraid of venturing into a new area that they know nothing about. It starts with a gumption to be the change they want to see. As cliched as it sounds- more often than not Social Enterprise just stems from a need for things to work differently, with everyday mothers, retirees and bored youth looking for something new. In the two weeks I have had plenty of time to talk to many of the food entrepreneurs associated with Detroit Food Academy as well as the brains behind Green Garage. There is one thing in common - they did not start out as crusaders with a utopian vision to single handedly change the world. They started out small , taking on step at a time and never being satisfied with what they had achieved. Impacting the lives was just a consequence of the larger goals of making things better than they were before. Tom and Peggy started the Green Garage because they refused to believe that business and sustainability could be at odds with each other. After studying up on sustainability and “green” businesses they came up with a building that was in tandem with the environment around it and supported collaboration at all levels - with the environment as well as the people conducting business there. It not only houses many communally and environmentally conscious businesses but is also extremely energy efficient and eco friendly. Tom and Peggy’s insistence on making their idea be a reality has resulted in a space that serves as a clear contrast to the schism between commerce and the planet. Be it the story of a mother who couldn't find the fresh taste for juices that she wanted for her children, or the parents who wanted to give their kids nutrition and taste through popcorns, social entrepreneurship sagas tend to be indicative of a fresh, quirky need to do things differently. As they progress, they make the communities around them a little happier, a little brighter and a little better. So even though, I am still looking for a way to define social entrepreneurship cohesively, I am connected to it in more ways than one. It maybe a nebulous concept for me but it is no less inspirational and awe inspiring. My first two weeks in Detroit have definitely clarified my understanding of social entrepreneurship. For me, it comes down to three key concepts: collaboration, constant innovation and social impact. In my opinion, a specific initiative qualifies as social entrepreneurship if it is subject to continuous mutation, relies on the interaction between numerous actors and leads to the creation of social value. My experience in Detroit has been filled with examples of this, and in a way the entire city seems to exemplify this concept: whether through urban farming initiatives, which go beyond selling their vegetables at Eastern Market and organize resource workshops for representatives of other community gardens or fund rain catchment systems for other projects, or Zen Organics, a Buddhist temple that produces delicious raw, vegan and gluten free granola. Biking through the streets of Detroit, you feel this desire and essential need for resurgence and revival and social entrepreneurship is the logical answer.
However, this forward-thinking constructive atmosphere is not only the product of different individual ventures, but the response to a cohesive engagement of multiple actors: from Midtown residents interacting with the local Police Department at a Midtown Alliance meeting to the larger scale partnerships between the city government, downtown businesses and the Parks and Placemaking department of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. Essential to this concept is also the idea of sustained and impactful change. These collaborative networks are not working to improve the city statistics to make them shine on power points, but because they care about tackling the root of problems and transforming their city environment from within. They are not simply funding renovations of public spaces, but creating programs such as the BIZ at Downtown Detroit Partnership, so that businesses commit to participating financially in amenities for a pleasant downtown area. This brings me to one of the key reasons for social entrepreneurship. Around the world, people are grasping a unique opportunity to bring social and private actors together. Most of the world’s capital is in the hands of private firms and public money is dwindling. In addition to that, the public sector cannot afford to act fast and jump-start ideas while risking failure, whereas private investors can. I believe that there is great potential for cities to implement innovative new projects through the supportive framework of public-private collaboration. City governments are not only challenged by financial constraints, but also a set of administrative barriers, which private companies and non-profits can more rapidly overcome. Working at MoGo has opened my eyes to a unique example of social entrepreneurship. Now funded for the next three years by two main private entities, the Henry Ford Health System and Hap, MoGo was initiated in the heart of Wayne State University and operates as a non-profit affiliate of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. Social entrepreneurship is at work at MoGo in the regular brainstorming sessions of its core team of three, where ideas are bounced around on whiteboards about how to engage the community and making them feel that MoGo, a communal bike share program, belongs to them as well. As Thomas and I work to create an evaluation plan, I am realizing that there is a strong emphasis on accountability regarding this program’s success. Just like many initiatives around the city, the goal is to create substantive social change and for MoGo this means offering not only an annual pass for the downtown businesswoman, but also an $5 Access Pass for those receiving state benefits, making bikes accessible to everyone in Detroit. Photo: Thomas and I volunteering at Keep Growing Detroit's Plum St. Market Garden after work last Thursday. We greatly enjoyed constructing tomato trellises and weeding fennel! :) I have always felt like kind of a fake when I found myself talking about social entrepreneurship. In all honesty, “social entrepreneurship” just sounds like a couple of buzz words put together in an effort to make business sound more humane– more stomach-able. In fact, the language surrounding social entrepreneurship is rife with these buzz words: “innovation” and “networking” and “pragmatic visionary.” I never admitted my views on the vagueness of the field to anyone, unable to confess to the awkward fact that I was enrolled in the “Innovation & Entrepreneurship” certificate without even knowing what it meant. I knew the term was something I could leverage for the public good, but it seemed to evade the simple definitions that could be ascribed to terms and concepts in my other classes.
Coming to Detroit, I did not expect to have an epiphany on the matter, but I was hoping the idea of “social entrepreneurship" would start to clarify itself. After two weeks at TechTown, I certainly do not have a clear-cut definition of what it means to be a social entrepreneur, but I have begun to find answers in the unlikeliest of places. Though I have been exposed to the incredible strides being made by social ventures at TechTown in the fields of medicine, technology, and even retail, I have learned most about what social entrepreneurship means to me from three politicians and the Motown Museum. This past week, TechTown received a visit from Senators Debbie Stabenow, Gary Peters, and Cory Booker. The three Senators, along with a panel of Detroit entrepreneurs, addressed the changing American economic climate and how best to meet the concerns of small-business owners. Throughout the course of the event, the group discussed apprentice-based learning, automated manufacturing, loan acquisition, and caribbean food. The three Senators listened attentively to the issues facing the business-owners, actively articulating potential legislative solutions and aids. The exchange between the public and private sector was alive before my eyes on the first floor of TechTown, and I began to understand social entrepreneurship as an ecosystem of actions, all of which could be, if handled properly, maintained to promote broad and equitable economic growth in a city like Detroit, or Durham. Ventures could have clearly-stated social missions, but they could also serve the simple mission of community empowerment and ownership. In this sense, many projects fall under the umbrella of social entrepreneurship. In Detroit, nearly everything is touched by a pervasive spirit of this sort of entrepreneurialism meant to uplift and embody a community. Even while walking through the Motown Museum, I could not help but think of Berry Gordy’s brainchild as the ultimate testament to Detroit innovation. Here was a businessman, driven by a creative and lucrative concept, who ingeniously swept the globe with chart-topping hits. And yet, while Motown was a profit-driven machine, it used its platform to promote the values of peace, love, hope, optimism, and equality, giving a little piece of Detroit to ears everywhere. Its sounds serve a purpose larger than money, even if money was its original motive. Social entrepreneurship is taking shape for me as a private sector translation of grassroots democracy. Through socially motivated private action, thoughtfully coordinated with creative public policy, citizens can reach sustainable economic independence on their own terms, and demand that their economy fit with their moral conceptions of themselves. I am not sure if my definition matches up with those of textbooks or professors, but even if it is peculiar, it is definitely helping to stabilize the buzz words. |
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