Original post by INA PAIVA CORDLE via The Miami Herald
Lorena Garcia Duran is building a community of change makers in Miami
Some people want to change their lives.
Lorena Garcia Duran and Ashoka, the nonprofit organization whose Miami office she heads, want to change the world.
Garcia Duran opened Ashoka’s Miami office in February, and we met her in May at a Miami summit for the Ashoka Support Network.
Arlington, Va.-based Ashoka is a global organization focused on social entrepreneurship, which is geared to finding solutions to social and environmental problems.
A few weeks ago, we met with Garcia Duran in her Biscayne Boulevard office to delve more into Ashoka’s plans in Miami, and then we emailed her these questions.
Here are her written responses:
Q. Please tell me about Ashoka, its mission and its history.
A. If our business is to change the world, for more than 30 years we have been investing in leading social entrepreneurs who are solving all types of social problems in all corners of the world with high impact, scalable and sustainable solutions.
As an organization we have evolved to understand that the real transformative change will come when all people become change makers.
We understand that the most transformative change of all is not the program, A, in health or the program, B, in environment or not even the network of social entrepreneurs by itself, but the most powerful change today is that every single individual realizes their potential as change makers.
We need to reach the point in society where every single individual has the experience of leading change and becoming a change maker and every single institution sees itself as a source of change makers and positive impact in society; business, schools, academia, church, communities, neighborhoods.
We already have a network of 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs working across the globe in different fields.
Now, imagine how that would be if it was in your neighborhood, and your neighbor two blocks from your house was a change maker thinking about how to change society, and children at school and colleagues at your office were all thinking about how to solve problems instead of expecting someone else to come up with a solution.
If we accomplish this we believe this could be the only kind of real force that could bring a world where we can have sustained progress and good.
Q. What exactly is social entrepreneurship?
A. Ashoka’s founder Bill Drayton coined the concept of social entrepreneurship and created Ashoka with the first goal to support social entrepreneurs.
We call them Ashoka Fellows and we like to say that our Ashoka fellows are what the Steve Jobs and the Bill Gates are for the business entrepreneurs.
In business you have many entrepreneurs, but there are only a few who will bring really breakthrough innovations that will transform entire industries.
Ashoka fellows are the equivalent to the Steve Jobs and the Bill Gates in the social field. They are bringing new solutions that will transform an entire field, a country, a region with their solution.
The only difference with the business entrepreneurs is that a business entrepreneur will be focused on capturing the market and growing their own company with a mandate to maximize profit.
A social entrepreneur will be focused on transforming the system and making the solution accessible to the bigger groups of population, but not necessarily capturing the idea and building their own organization. On the contrary, they are giving it away and having others replicate the idea.
So, with a very successful or highly successful social entrepreneur, the bottom line will be that the system has changed, society has changed, a field has changed, but not necessarily by the measure of growing their own organization but because their main idea became the norm.
