2017-10-03
37 分钟Welcome to LSE IQ, a podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science,
where we ask leading social scientists and other experts to answer an intelligent question about economics,
politics or society.
Over the last couple of decades, Western aid agencies, the World Bank,
NGOs and business schools have all enthusiastically embraced the concept of social entrepreneurship.
This takes the methods and energy of business entrepreneurship and applies them to often intractable social or environmental problems.
Social enterprises hold the promise of developing financially sustainable solutions and of providing dignity rather than just charity for those they seek to help.
In this episode of LSE IQ, Sue Wendy Bank asks, could social entrepreneurship be the answer to world poverty?
Growing up on the Cape Flats,
I was exposed to people using drugs and also like a lot of gang violence and by seeing
that all the time I thought that is what I should eventually become.
I thought it was the right thing,
I thought it was normal and eventually after a while I started experimenting with drugs.
After being on drugs for a few years, I then eventually started selling.
This is the voice of Brent Williams, an ex-drug dealer and former meth addict from the Cape Flats,
a community in Cape Town, South Africa, beset by serious social problems including poverty, high unemployment and gangs.
One day, while high on drugs, Brent decided he would make a name for himself by killing his parents.
He took a kitchen knife and although he held the blade in front of his mother's face,
something stopped him from hurting her.
He still went on to hold his parents hostage for four hours until the police arrived and this wasn't the turning point in Brent's life.