The Age of Ambition - New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

This is a great article on the burgeoning field of social entrepreneurship - the practice of young people like you and me making altruistic efforts to reach out to the poor and mis fortunate in third world countries. The article brings up a really good point of how this generation of social entrepreneurs is parallel to that of the hippie protesters of the 1960's; just like our mom's and dad's 40 years ago, young people today are willing to make a difference because their government can not.

Has anybody seriously considered this at all? I mean if I had the time and resources, I'd love to get involved. I think it would be pretty honorable and noble to help the natives in an underdeveloped country, or to even assist the underprivileged on the domestic front, by possibly joining Teach For America or something like that. Hell, I wouldn't even mind giving the Peace Corps a shot if I could take time off from school/work for a few years or so.

The thing is that anybody can get into it: The article makes not of a Harvard grad named Andrew Kabler whom started out by contributing to the young children of AIDS victims as a sophomore in school. He started out by making small donations to cover school expenses for young orphans, paying administrative costs out of pocket along with a few of his friends. Now he has even expanded the operation to include a huge eyeglasses drive to assist those with vision-related problems. This caught my eye because here you have a guy who is basically a year or two younger than us at the time contributing more time and effort to these people than most governments would. A 20-year-old kid making more of a difference in underdeveloped societies than governments with trillion-dollar budgets normally do. It's really fascinating and simultaneously, rather sad.

I really think that social entrepreneurship has a bright future because frankly, I think it is truly the only way that economic concerns in third-world nations can be solved. As I noted before, most governments around the world are negligent and ignore the concerns of the deprived and malnourished. Sure they may say that they care as a big PR move, but how many governments truly make it their priority? And i'm not necessarily directing this at the U.S. and the West (although they could always contribute more) but mainly at the governments that preside over the disadvantaged. The rulers of these African nations who would rather hoard their riches and build palaces and raise armies than providing support and building infrastructure for those in need. Africa has been in a horrid state of affairs since European colonization dissolved, and I really don't think much will change in the near future.

But in the mean time, all we can do is hope that governments and world leaders can start taking closer notice at these pertinent issues. And more importantly - that these social entrepreneurs keep putting up the good fight.