“Letter to a Young Social Entrepreneur: the poor are not the raw material for your salvation”

That’s the title of a post by an award-winning social entrepreneur himself, Liam Black:

looking back I can see clearly that a core part of what drove me was the seeking of approval of an absent father (long story) and a huge enjoyment at the attention which came with being in the vanguard of the UK social enterprise movement. It feels very good to be talked and written about and even better if there are awards and baubles.

Heroes are like the human body – the closer you get to them the more flawed, messy and complicated they are… I hope you will win lots of awards, Jude. But just be clear about your motivations.

h/t Sara Minard.

My opinions on social entrepreneurship exceed my hard knowledge of facts, which means I have a lot of inflammatory things to say. Unfortunately I have a baby in one hand and am supposed to be prepping two classes with the other (I have 14 hours before they start) and so you will get no more than this for now.

Actually, you will get one excellent morsel: BBC’s Peter Day moderates a social entrepreneurship conference. He is brilliant, provocative and informed, as are several of the panelists, which makes me wonder why (with perhaps the exception of Jon Stewart) North American news moderators need to be buffoons.

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