recent article on "social entrepreneurs" -- exactly what WP is doing

Hello, hardworking Listeners.
Week 2, & we get to hear the personal stories. So great to be connected to ppl on the other side of the planet & feel they are right here w/ us.

This website, article or writer might interest you, becz he speaks exactly to what WP does, in essence.

Here is the link from The New York Times, from November 2012:

MAIN POINT:
"... the world has seen a marked increase in the number of people who have the capacity to be change-makers."

An excerpt follows -- & if in a hurry, please see the last paragraph, because it applies to WP. If interested, you can subscribe to this column/blog , called "Fixes." "Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work." See also author/journalist David Bornstein, who write on solutions to social issues & social entrepreneurship.

EXCERPT:

It’s only in the past 30 years — and primarily in the past 10 — as the number of social entrepreneurs has multiplied, that we’ve come to appreciate their role in social change — and begun to study their methods.

What happened to spark these changes around the world?

Over the past generation — because of historic shifts like the women’s movement, the spread of political freedoms and access to education, and the growth of middle classes in many developing countries — the world has seen a marked increase in the number of people who have the capacity to be change-makers.

At the same time, because of the pace of change and the information revolution, more people are aware that institutions — especially governments and businesses — are failing to address big problems in the environment, the economy and education. As Peter Drucker, the management expert, has written: “In a world buffeted by change, faced daily with new threats to survival, the only way to conserve is by innovating.”

~~~~~ ... ...

If we wanted to build a system that would elicit solutions to complex and unforeseeable problems wherever they were needed, how might we do it?

We might try to identify leaders scattered in communities around the planet and help them address problems as they appeared. We might try to prepare these people with leadership skills, ideas and resources so they could be effective and ethical change-makers.