How to Change the World

The book that start­ed all of this for me was How to Change the World: Social Entre­pre­neurs and the Pow­er of New Ideas by David Born­stein. He pro­files peo­ple who have made a change in their world, focus­ing on nine indi­vid­u­als who were select­ed for fel­low­ships by an orga­ni­za­tion called Ashoka. Ashoka’s mis­sion is “to shape a cit­i­zen sec­tor that is entre­pre­neur­ial, pro­duc­tive and glob­al­ly inte­grat­ed, and to devel­op the pro­fes­sion of social entre­pre­neur­ship around the world.”

I found each of the indi­vid­u­al’s sto­ries to be an inspi­ra­tion. The things that they accom­plished were indeed extra­or­di­nary, yet the peo­ple them­selves did not seem to be that much dif­fer­ent from any­one else that I know. What made them stand out was their con­vic­tion, deter­mi­na­tion, and per­se­ver­ance. Maybe we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be smarter, rich­er, or bet­ter con­nect­ed to make a dif­fer­ence. Maybe we just need to try.