David Bornstein: How to Change the World

This evening I attended a MIT Ashoka Foundation event that featured David Bornstein the author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. David has his MBA from McGill University in Montreal, has worked as a software developer, and is a journalist. He spent several years interviewing Ashoka Foundation fellows and tells the most compelling stories in his book.

How to Change the World tells the fascinating stories of these remarkable individuals””many in the United States, others in countries from Brazil to Hungary””providing an In Search of Excellence for the social sector. In America, one man, J.B. Schramm, has helped thousands of low-income high school students get into college. In South Africa, one woman, Veronica Khosa, developed a home-based care model for AIDS patients that changed government health policy. In Brazil, Fabio Rosa helped bring electricity to hundreds of thousands of remote rural residents. Another American, James Grant, is credited with saving 25 million lives by leading and “marketing” a global campaign for immunization. Yet another, Bill Drayton, created a pioneering foundation, Ashoka, that has funded and supported these social entrepreneurs and over a thousand like them, leveraging the power of their ideas across the globe.

These extraordinary stories highlight a massive transformation that is going largely unreported by the media: Around the world, the fastest-growing segment of society is the nonprofit sector, as millions of ordinary people””social entrepreneurs””are increasingly stepping in to solve the problems where governments and bureaucracies have failed. How to Change the World shows, as its title suggests, that with determination and innovation, even a single person can make a surprising difference. For anyone seeking to make a positive mark on the world, this will be both an inspiring read and an invaluable handbook. It will change the way you see the world.

Pasted from http://www.howtochangetheworld.org/text/book.html>

I highly recommend the book and if you are interested in reading more, there is an interview in changemakers.net with David about what he learned.

I put a link in the book section on the lefthand side of the page if you want to buy the book at Amazon.