The Role of Social Enterprise and the Social Entrepreneur in Innovative and Effective Community Building, Especially for Disadvantaged Communities

Kernot C¹*

1. Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Oxford, London, UK

The market economy, although producing increased wealth for many, has left a sizeable minority behind, increasingly concentrated in specific geographic areas. Some social problems such as persistent unemployment amongst minority groups have proved resistant to large-scale interventions from successive governments, but increasingly social entrepreneurs are successfully tailoring local solutions which involve high levels of community engagement.

Social entrepreneurs spot gaps in our social fabric, and create new social institutions and instruments to fill those gaps. They use the same degree of enterprise and imagination as business entrepreneurs, but their aim is to enrich society; to bridge the gap between the powerful and the powerless, and to create a commonwealth of opportunity. Working in deprived communities or in innovatory voluntary or public bodies or in social businesses, they strive to make better use of under-utilised resources. They create bridging social capital between sectors not usually working in partnership e.g. banks and marginalised housing estates.

As Director of Learning at the London School for Social Entrepreneurs I can present powerful UK case studies of best practice and what underpins successful outcomes in this area of growing public policy significance.