Budding Social Entrepreneurs through Social Work Education: A Prospective Analysis.

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is the use of entrepreneurial principles and market-based methods to solve social issues as diverse as poverty, educational inequity, gender disparity and environmental degradation. This fast emerging field is ringing in innovation, efficiency, sustainability, and rigour to the social sector and has the potential to address the most pressing needs of our society. The last three years has witnessed the government and NGOs such as the CMD, Villgro and Kaanthari spearheading initiatives for finding innovative solutions. An analysis of training for students of Social Work provides opportunities to experiment with start-ups. The same will infuse an entrepreneurship spirit among students who will attempt to address various needs encountered as part of their fieldwork training into different social enterprises. The paper attempts to explain how social entrepreneurship education can be channelized to deal with contemporary issues by way of self-sustaining initiatives and also prove to be a learning experience in developing sustainable business models perceived to be outside the perspective of social work acumen. The data for same has been generated through various secondary literature surveys.