Outsourcing, social entrepeneurs, and elsewhere

After reading an article from the Skoll Foundation on social entrepreneurs and the following up on the ideas of Samasourcing I do agree that there needs to be some form of help for the women, children, and refugees of the world. However, I often wonder about folks at the local level that are never really talked about right in front of us here in the US.

So what is the true function of a social entrepreneur? Are these people really looking out for the people they claim to be, or actually finding one more way to make a name for themselves and of course money for themselves. Do they really want to help the ‘less fortunate’ or just get the attention of media and win awards? I am starting to have my doubts because they almost always seem to focus outside of the United States.

So how do we really push this trend back into helping the many here first so that perhaps, just thinking here that the people helped here first then can spread their gain to others here and then move out from that point to other communities, cities, states, and then other countries.? Don’t get me wrong here, of course we should help others in other countries, but isn’t it about time we start to acknowledge that there are major problems at home and we the people without help from Washington can actually take care of these issues?

So instead of outsourcing ( really this just makes higher profits for US based companies) let’s think about ‘re-sourcing’ . This means to take similar models used like micro-financing, community co-ops, and beyond back into our country. The social entrepreneur might be surprised that they can actually help people here in the US and locally like Colorado Springs by actually thinking like social change agents  instead of thinly veiled attention and money getting.

What do you think about this?