Book+report

Jason Patterson Univ. 391 10-27-2014 How To Change The World "How To Change The World”, is a book by David Bornstein who comes in contact with Social Entrepreneurs. Social Entrepreneurs are people that have powerful ideas to improve other people's lives by implementing their ideas across cities, countries, and in some cases the world. These people are engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalist, parents who solve social problems on a large scale having a profound effect on society. They are people who will not give up their ideas and spread them as far as possible. Also they want to create a transformative force that addresses major problems in the pursuit of their vision. These people are from United States, India, Hungary, Brazil, Burkina Faso who are said to have advanced systematic change, shifted behavior patterns and perceptions.

The creative people Bornstein describes possess the determination and will to propel the innovation that society needs to tackle its toughest problems. He explains that these lessons can be applied across all types of organizations and industries with the right type of determination and effectiveness. He talks about two important things in that they are called the “citizen sector”, and “sharpening the role of government”.

The citizen sector is the non profit and non governmental organizations that makes up the framework of the social and environmental supports, by doing this you want to multiply the number and effectiveness of the worlds social Entrepreneurs.

In that “sharpening the role of the government”, is shifting practices and attitudes in business and opening up waves of opportunity for people to apply their talents in new, positive ways, he says “the emerging citizen sector is reorganizing the way the work of society gets done”.

My favorite story Bornstein wrote was about Justin Dart, he is a Texas Republican who contracted polio in 1948 at the age of 18, and was denied a teaching certificate because he had to use a wheelchair. After visiting a facility in South Vietnam in 1967 for children with polio and seeing the deplorable conditions there, he returned to the United States to make a change and became a spokesman for disability rights. He then would eventually become a member of the National Council on the Handicapped during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and worked to advance the first version of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1990, as he was the chairman of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, he fought hard to achieve the law's passage. This is the type of person who was faced with a challenge at the age of 18, and didn't give up through determination and innovation he helped advance the first version of the American with Disabilities act.

He also talks about through the example of Muhammed Yunus that he wanted to innovate better ways of groups of people to get out of poverty he faced this challenge by creating a way villagers can access small amounts of working capital to purchases assets and increase productivity to capture the profits that usually goes to the government. I feel The message Bornstein is trying to put out is that inspired individuals can use determination and innovation to make a huge difference.