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From Cairo to D.C.: Advancing Social Entrepreneurship on a Global Scale

Summary: 
Sonal Shah, Director of the Office, blogs about the Presidential Summit on Entpreneurship, an exciting gathering of entrepreneurs - business and social - and the people who support them.

This week, the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship brought together more than 275 participants from over 50 countries around the world—from Morocco to Indonesia, Uganda to Kazakhstan, France to India— to represent their regions, sectors, and communities for two days here in Washington, DC.

DPC Director Melody Barnes participated  on the Access to Capital panel and articulated the importance of providing capital to both business and social entrepreneurs.   I was fortunate to moderate a panel discussion on social entrepreneurship with Yuyun Ismawati, an entrepreneur from Indonesia who has developed a community-based sanitation model in 300 communities and 1,000 locations; representatives of entrepreneurship support organizations like Iman Bibars, the Arab World Director of Ashoka and Charlotte Hochman of La Ruche that incubates social innovators in Paris; Chris Hughes, a technologist who co-founded Facebook and recently launched Jumo, an online networking tool for international development; and Aaron Williams, Director of the Peace Corps.

The panel highlighted interesting models of entrepreneurship from around the world, different approaches of each of the organizations and most importantly key things that they have learned in their successes.  The Summit (and the panel) provided us an opportunity to better understand from the panelists and the audience, the obstacles to advancing entrepreneurship and what they see as potential solutions. There were some great lessons learned that we’ll share in more detail on this blog in the coming weeks. And across the Summit, we were amazed by the number of just incredibly moving stories of entrepreneurship – social and business – from people in the audience and on stage alike.

Wednesday and Thursday, a number of partner events continued the discussion and built upon the progress made at the Summit, and yesterday I enjoyed keynoting and taking some Q&A at the Brookings Institute’s Middle East Youth Initiative’s (MEYI) event on social entrepreneurship, one of the many follow-on activities to the Summit. They’ve just released an excellent report on social entrepreneurship in the Middle East that Secretary Clinton highlighted at the top of her remarks that concluded the Summit.

Finally, be sure to take a look at all the entrepreneurship initiatives announced at the Summit, as well as the remarks by the President, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Locke, and NEC Director, Larry Summers. It truly was an exciting week for advancing the President’s vision for a new beginning.

Sonal Shah is Deputy Assistant to the President and Director, Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.