Female Social Entrepreneur Wins Honour
Daphne Nederhorst is a wonder. She's also this year's Runner-Up for BC Business Magazine's Social Entrepreneur of the Year. And the wonder ? Her business is eliminating poverty.
Daphne is one of the people who looked around, eyes wide open, and saw that the world's poor could also be smart - that they had innovative ways of dealing with their own poverty and were being successful at it. We don't usually think that in Canada because we only see the media images of people in immediate crisis. Someone in immediate crisis does need help; something terrible has just happened to them.
But Daphne has been looking at, and honouring, people's ingenuity almost all of her life and now she shines a spotlight, literally, on their achievements and from there, creates a revenue source from interested parties donating a little extra to make those ingenious people with extraordinary leadership and community building skills do even more. Like firefighters with a little more hose; their reach goes further.
An additional wonder in all the business hoopla is that Daphne and only one other woman share the spotlight for runners-up in various entrepreneurial categories and yet, a recent CIBC Report: Women Entrepreneurs: Leading the Charge article showed that ..."the number of women run businesses is rising 60% faster than those run by men" Yep, women are in the workforce, we are developing and running our businesses but we are still not honoured at the same rate as men. All this makes Daphne's poverty+business+ success story all the more extraordinary.
Kudos to Daphne Nederhorst and her social enterprise Sawa Global. I will absolutely report more of these success stories to encourage more women and more social entrepreneurs to get up and compete for the limelight in a world where the 'World' is the most important thing and people will be fed and places will be re-built and societies will join more and fight less. Sound utopian ? Does make more money, waste more resources and collect too much stuff sound better ? Like the PowerSmart ads suggest: we don't think it's ridiculous because we're use to doing it.
