Note: Modifications described below were inspired by the 2016 report “Tackling heropreneurship: An ‘apprenticing with a problem’ approach to move us from social entrepreneur to social impact” by Daniela Papi-Thorton, funded and supported by the Clore Social Leadership Programme and the Skoll Foundation. Click here to read more about the report.

Overview

Papi-Thornton’s 2016 report posits that universities with social entrepreneurship programs too often praise and celebrate the solo student entrepreneur, thereby engaging in “heropreneurship” by allocating funding and support to student founders of organizations and in the process, overshadowing the role of teams, collaboration, and building upon the ideas of others. An alternative route is to encourage and support students to build allies and work collaboratively to understand and tackle problems. As students often do not come from the communities they wish to serve, Papi-Thornton believes it imperative for universities to provide opportunities for students to “apprentice with a problem” long enough to understand how they can add value as a changemaker.

Inspired by the report, I spearheaded explicitly embedding  an “apprentice with the problem” philosophy into our programs to encourage students to better understand social problems before attempting to solve them. Below is a snapshot of ways in which we have incorporated this philosophy into our work.

Changemaker Catalyst Award (CCA)

Traditionally, CCA has been used to support experiential learning for students interested in pursuing careers related to social innovation, social entrepreneurship and design thinking.  In the past, applicants described how the experience would enhance their academic understanding and contribute to their professional aspirations.

In its newest iteration, language was shifted to reflect how changemakers must have a deep knowledge about the problem they aim to solve, especially if they wish to create an innovative solution that disrupts a broken system. As many of our students have not lived with the problem they are trying to solve, we altered the language of this award to encourage students to “apprentice with a problem” to better understand complex problems. Students can now use this funding to participate in experiential learning opportunities that explore the ecosystem of a social challenge via:

• Interning with an organization that serves a similar demographic or issue in the problem target area
• Participating in an in-depth field immersion experience
• Receiving funding for an extensive research project into a social challenge

Changemaker Institute

The Changemaker Institute (CI) is a social venture accelerator for undergraduate and graduate students. In this past, CI has focused nearly exclusively on supporting students with ideas for their own social venture. Inspired by the report, we overhauled the CI application process to encourage students with intrapreneurial ideas to apply, thereby focusing on partnerships and building innovative capacity within existing organizations vs. launching one’s solo project.

In addition, the new application focuses much more on “the problem” and much less on “the new idea.” Students are now required to conduct extensive primary and secondary research before applying to CI to better understand the problem they wish to solve before jumping in with their solution.

With this new approach, CI’s success will not only be measured by launching successful ventures, but also by the extent to which we equip students with tools to more deeply understand social challenges they seek to solve. This new approach focuses on the journey of learning, failing, iterating, joining forces with other local change agents and allies, and finding ways to contribute to solutions to global challenges and add value as a changemaker, no matter what path students choose. This philosophy is closely linked to our philosophy at Taylor/within SISE, and in Ashoka’s “Everyone a Changemaker” approach.

Other programs

Taylor has infused this philosophy into several other programs, including:

• Changemaker Residential Learning Community: We are actively encouraging students to attend other events and join other changemaking efforts, rather than plan their own events or spearhead their own projects.
• SISE 2010: The focus in this class has shifted away from learning about the solo social entrepreneur toward more deeply understanding social problems one wishes to solve.
• IGNITE Pre-Orientation Program: During this week-long service and learning program for 72 incoming students, we incorporated many more learning opportunities with community leaders and activists, thereby exposing students to a wide ecosystem of local changemakers and encouraging them to reconnect via internships, service-learning opportunities, and volunteer work throughout their time at Tulane.