http://www.socialedge.org/Events/ThoughtLeaders/24

Engaging youth to be social entrepreneurs

Social entrepreneurship is taking off across the globe. For the under 18 crowd, however, it appears that much less is happening and the word has yet to get out. Paul Lamb, a Man on a Mission, wonders how to engage the new generation.

Case in point… a couple of weeks ago I served as a judge for the Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE) business competition.

High school student teams had to launch actual or virtual businesses that were judged in part on the basis of social responsibility, civic engagement and environmental awareness. When I asked the top competing high school teams what a social entrepreneur was, not a single student knew the answer…

Consider this: the volunteer rate for young people ages 12 to 18 in the United States is nearly twice the rate of that for adults. Yet, there are relatively few resources for training and promoting social entrepreneurship among that age group –in the US or abroad.

That being the case… we need to answer the following questions:

• As 500 million young people enter the workforce over the next decade, how do we expect to nurture a thriving movement of social entrepreneurs if they are largely left out of the equation?

• How can we best engage young people to become active social entrepreneurs, and not just train future professionals to be ethical business practitioners?

• What projects stand out as good examples of best practices in the Youth Social Enterprise (YSE) space?

• Finally, if you were emperor for a day, how would you go about building a Youth Social Enterprise movement?

I have invited a number of experts in the field to join us for this discussion, including Vansouk Lianemany, whom I helped develop a T-shirt business run entirely by ex-gang youth in the San Francisco East Bay.