Journalist David Bornstein delivers the annual Hart House Lecture this Wednesday titled “So you Want to Change the World? The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurship and the Rise of the Citizen Sector.”
“The aim of the Hart House Lecture is to bring outside ideas into the university environment,” says Derek Tsang, one of the organizers. Appropriately, this year’s lecturer is also interested in new ideas. Bornstein grew up in Montreal, and received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University. A former computer programmer, he decided to go into journalism after a backpacking trip around southeast Asia. While freelancing, he became interested in what he calls social entrepreneurship.
“A social entrepreneur is someone who has the creativity, drive, resourcefulness, and dedication of an entrepreneur, who uses his abilities and energies to pursue…positive social change in the world,” Bornstein said in an interview with The Varsity. “Traditional activists operate on the premise that the way to change society is largely through adversarial pressure…Social entrepreneurs operate on the premise that in addition to changing existing structures we also have to build many, many new institutions that don’t yet exist.”
Bornstein cites Muhammad Yunus, inventor of “micro-credit” and the subject of his first book, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, as an example of a social entrepreneur. Micro-credit is the practice of making very small loans to poor entrepreneurs who are unable to obtain assistance from larger banks. The loans are often for as little as US$25, and are used to cover the basic operating costs incurred when getting a business off the ground. Founded by Yunus in Bangladesh in 1996, the Grameen Bank now has over four million borrowers, of which 96 per cent are women entrepreneurs.
“Yunus came up with an idea. He saw over the horizon to an idea that other people didn’t see,” said Bornstein. “Once he saw that opportunity, he built a team, he hired people, and he developed systems to make that happen on a large scale.
“What you have there is a perfect example of how an idea goes from basically not existing to spreading around the world.”
Bornstein’s latest book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas is about other social entrepreneurs around the world. Some of their stories will be shared at the lecture on Wednesday evening.
“I’m going to be discussing some of the changes that are occurring in the world today that are expanding options for people around the world,” he says.
The Hart House Lecture Series began in 2001. Past Hart House lecturers include Alan Lightman and Jennifer Welsh.
“The past few lectures have been on Canada, our identity in the world, [and] citizenship. This is just an extension of that: what social entrepreneurship can do for us.”
Bornstein thinks that social entrepreneurship can do quite a bit, especially for students.
“This is a whole new sector that’s emerging, a whole new career path,” he says. “You could spend the next 50 years of your life doing something that really turns you on, that has a real social impact.”
The lecture takes place Wednesday in Hart House’s Great Hall at 7:30pm, and will later be broadcast on CBC Radio’s Ideas and TVO’s Big Ideas. Tickets are free but must be reserved. They are available at 416 97-UTTIX or UofTtix.ca. For more information, see www.harthouselecture.ca.
