A Polish entrepreneur who has been teaching young Palestinians in Gaza conflict resolution skills through drama, the co-founder of a non-governmental organisation cooperating with miners in Colombia and leaders of a group which is helping young Parisians – many from distressed neighbourhoods – set up businesses.

These ‘social’ entrepreneurs were among 32 from Europe, Africa and the Americas, who have just taken part in a special programme at INSEAD, aimed at honing their business skills. The five-day course, held mid-December (2006) at the school’s Europe campus in Fontainebleau, tackled a range of business disciplines and issues such as leading change, micro finance, venture capital, governance and humanitarian logistics.

Bruce Kogut (seen right), the Eli Lilly chaired Professor of Innovation, Business and Society and Professor of Strategy, says this is the second time INSEAD has staged its social entrepreneurship programme: “We want to do more to put INSEAD into communities which require our help and who can also help us with their knowledge.”

“What drives these people is usually passion. They have an innovative idea that they want to realize, sometimes often after they’ve had a life experience. One or two participants had a near death experience, rethought their lives and wondered what should I do with it?”

“Some people were just born with this passion, or perhaps they were close to going the wrong way and they recovered from it and they want to be involved to make things better,” Kogut adds.

After setting up a theatre programme in his native Poland about 12 years ago, Adam Jagiello-Rusilowski, 38, has more recently been using his theatre skills in Gaza to teach young Palestinians the art of conflict resolution.

He says that according an impact assessment his group carried out in Gaza “(some) 25 per cent of the kids participating in drama changed their beliefs about what they can do … Those who thought of themselves as live targets or becoming a martyr, they suddenly discovered their self efficacy in doing other things and transferred their belief to real life opportunities and (became) interested in education and learning new skills.”

He adds that, at first, Hamas officials had tried to block his efforts, in the belief that the programme was too Western. However, they eventually gave the project their support and allowed more schools to take part and, in doing so, helped to take more young Palestinians off the streets.

“It’s about raising the new generation that is able to problem-solve. And it’s only part of the work. There can only be a political solution, but it’s very important to prepare young people for change because social change occurs over a long period of time and needs careful engineering,” he says.

He says he sees himself as a social entrepreneur as his work has both social and economic value: “By solving social problems in an innovative way, which has not been used before, I save money and generate money because I produce both consumers and ‘profit-makers,’ people … enjoy making money.”

Jagiello-Rusilowski says the INSEAD programme has been useful, particularly due to the school’s ability to attract entrepreneurs from diverse cultural backgrounds: “I love this about INSEAD, seeing all these people coming here for ideas but creating a new community as well, a community of people interested in the same thing and sharing their ideas and their solutions about these issues and I think it’s the future.”

30-year-old Catalina Cock Duque agrees. The founder of Corporacion Oro Verde in Colombia says the INSEAD social entrepreneurship programme was useful: “I would recommend it to anyone working in this field. There’s a big need to professionalise this sector. We – as social entrepreneurs – need to learn from the business sector and the business sector has a lot to learn from the social sector as well.”

Her organisation was set up in 2000 with the aim of helping some 1,600 platinum and gold miners as well as protecting 7,200 hectares of tropical rainforest in a region along Colombia’s Pacific coast.

A fellow of the Ashoka association which identifies and invests in social entrepreneurs, she says economic incentives can be a strong driver for environmental protection and for better practices in mining communities.

Cock Duque says she became a social entrepreneur after studying in the US and the UK: “I am one of the small percentage in Colombia who had access to good education … I felt I had to give something back to my country and to a society that is in a very precarious condition.”

Jeunes Entrepreneurs de France is helping – as the name of the group suggests – entrepreneurs aged between 18 and 35 in France, or to be more precise, in the suburbs of Paris set up their own businesses, mainly in the IT sector.

“They find it difficult to progress inside enterprises so some of them decided to create their own business because they dream of a better world, becoming their own boss so they can do a lot of things differently,” says the group’s 30-year-old chief finance officer, Majid El Jarroudi (pictured left with Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and Sadaffe Abid, chief operating officer of Kashf, one of the largest microfinance organisations in Pakistan), who participated in the course with Abdellah Abdoulharjan, the CEO of Jeunes Entrepreneurs.

He says he too found the INSEAD course useful: “It helps us to see more clearly, to put words in some things we are doing now, but we never thought about this way … And to exchange (ideas) with other social entrepreneurs is very useful because we can see what they do and how they work.”

It was also good, he says, to share experiences with social entrepreneurs from different cultural backgrounds although he adds that “after a while we don’t really see the differences. Even if you’re from Egypt, India, France Colombia or Turkey, it’s really quite similar.”

The next social entrepreneurship programme at INSEAD is being planned for December 2007.

(This article was first published Dec 15, 2006)