I took part in a fascinating conference last week hosted by the Ford Foundation called the Lab for New Thinking. We talked about the role that justice should play in shaping America’s role in the world. One comment made during our discussion that I strongly agreed with came from Bill Pace of the World Federalist Movement. He said that we need to stop thinking of America’s role in the world as only about U.S. government policy. We live increasingly in a world where civil society, NGOs, international institutions, and especially global business can make a huge impact on the lives of people around the world.

One exciting avenue where our country is increasingly making a positive contribution is through our social entrepreneurs. With that in mind, our organization hosted a mini-summit last week on “Social Entrepreneurship and Global Change.” The general consensus of the three hundred young leaders assembled at the summit was that the recent growth of social venture capital, micro-finance, non-profit tech companies, and other forms of social entrepreneurship was opening up exciting new opportunities for young people to do well and do good globally at the same time.

We’re now continuing this discussion with an online event on the Social Edge website – a website that is for social entrepreneurs written by social entrepreneurs. You can join the discussion at www.socialedge.org.

No related posts.