First, what is a “social entrepreneur”?
I’ll go with the definition from the Ashoka Innovators for the Public:
“Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems.”
The panel narrator at this meeting of the Commonwealth Club was Dr. Ruth Shapiro, who edited the book, The Real Problem Solvers: Social Entrepreneurs in America.
In the book thirteen social entrepreneurs are featured and four of them were present this evening.
One of my favorite quotes of the evening was from Kriss Deiglmeier of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University, “Execution trumps ideas.”
I left inspired to figure out something so brilliant as d.Light’s Solar Lantern that has empowered the lives of 10 million people!
My image for today is a sandwich of several images: a daisy, the palm of one of my friend’s hands, and the ceiling of the San Francisco Opera at the War Memorial Opera House.
The magic is in what you execute!
From the d.Light website here’s a very short video about their creation that has brought light to school kids so they can now study at night.