Week 2

Summary:

Like in the previous week, I learned what social innovation was but more in depth this week.  Social innovation works because of aspects within like the Economic Pyramid/Triangle, understanding the spectrum, and the role microfinance and impact investors play.  But before being able to use this information I need to know my talents, gifts, and callings in life as they will guide me in which direction to go in social innovation but also by using them, making my efforts successful.  I learned that even though not everyone can be a social entrepreneur, they can help in other ways to help a social cause in being a volunteer, donor, or advocate. 

Response to a reading:

In chapter 3 of “How to Change the World” by David Bornstein, a social entrepreneur in the book, Fabio Rosa, received an award for applying technology to benefit humanity.  In his acceptance speech he said, “I love technology.  I believe it is the principal force to bring change to humanity…When we use our intelligence and knowledge to serve people, humanity has hope.”  Something I wasn’t expecting stuck out to me as it opened my eyes in seeing things differently.  I need to get over my leeriness of technology.  It is clear to me that technology has, in some ways, made people lazy, introverted, and addicted to certain things.  However, I did not think that all of technology was bad, before reading his speech.  After all, technology has also given us almost endless knowledge resources, easier communication, and influenced medicine.  But something about relying so much on something that could be taken away from us in a power outage caused by weather conditions made me nervous.  But then it hit me that there is another side to technology that can’t be taken away from us, even in an attack on our power grids.  Knowledge.  Add service to the equation and there lies hope in humanity.

Weekly prompt:  What connections do you see between Jeffrey Thompson’s article, The Gospel, and social innovation?

The main connection that stood out to me between the article, the Gospel, and social innovation is figuring out what you enjoy doing, are good at, and are willing to master in order to help our environment and its people.  With the article, it encourages this type of actions in discovering ones calling(s) in life and making it meaningful while serving God’s children.  With social innovation, after figuring out what talents and abilities you have to give, use them in developing solutions and carrying out plans to better social and environmental issues.  Whether it be discovering our gifts or developing solutions through our talents, either way, if we are using them to better the world we live in, we also better mankind; making a real connection between the ideas suggested in the article, the Gospel and the definition of social innovation.