What is a social entrepreneur?

I am a social entrepreneur.  Ashoka defines a social entrepreneur as individuals with innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems.  

Social Entrepreneurs find ways to solve social problems where traditional measures just don’t work (ie, government, school districts, business, etc.). Some great examples of people who are social entrepreneurs are Muhammad Yunus (Founder of the Grameen Bank and Microfinance), and Margaret Sanger (Founder of Planned Parenthood).

Nearly as soon as I started teaching at the beginning of my post-college life, I recognized that there were a lot of ways to impact the lives of the students I worked with beyond my classroom walls.  Since then I’ve worked towards implementing entrepreneurial and nontraditional ideas to hammer away at problems related to education, urban poverty and civic engagement.

I’ve brought this instinct to ScriptEd.  We are innovatively solving a bunch of problems at the same time:

• Lack of Computer Science Educators in Schools: It’s not possible to become certified as a Computer Science teacher in New York State.  Our nontraditional solution here is to engage volunteers as teachers. ScriptEd staff work with volunteers to ensure that students in under resourced school get access to quality education as quickly as possible.
  
• Lack of Access to the Tech Community for Low-Income and Underrepresented Groups. Again we solve this through a bit of social engineering: We foster deep relationships between people from the tech community and students from under resourced schools, and then we connect kids to internships over the summer.  These connections are the social capital our students will need to access careers in tech.
  
• Pathway to the Middle Class:The economic impact of entering the technology industry will be enormous: while the average annual income for the demographic ScriptEd serves is $43,000 for a family of four, the average annual salary for a software developer in 2012 was $92,790.  To prepare students for careers, we make sure our curriculum is very industry focused.  

What are some out-of-the-box and creative ways you can make an impact in your community?