Dear Friend,

How To Change The World?
This story begins 2 years ago, when I picked up a copy of How To Change The World by David Bornstein. The book tells the story of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, and its goal to build a global community of social entrepreneurs, who apply innovative, sustainable, and scalable solutions to solve pressing social problems. The book was a heaven-send to me: as I pursued dual degrees in the College and Wharton, I often found myself torn apart between idealism (if educated kids like us don’t devote ourselves to helping the less fortunate, who will?), and pragmatism (you can save the world after you take care of your own financial well-being).
That book showed me that there are people out there who have combined “the enterprise of Richard Branson with the compassion of Mother Theresa”, and that we all have the capacity to follow in their footsteps. Reading about social entrepreneurs and how they are using the rigor of business thinking to innovate for the public interest got me excited: I wanted to know how I could “change the world” too.

How is PennSEM trying to change Penn?
PennSEM was founded a year ago, when I decided that I wanted to leave Penn having made some kind of long-term, positive impact on the school. Our University’s leadership talks about the school being a “force for good in the world” and our “pragmatic love for knowledge”, but at a pre-professional place like Penn, we need to see tangible ways of how we can help others. PennSEM wants to address our lack of knowledge and opportunities in the field of Social Entrepreneurship, because we want Penn students to have the knowledge to be forces of good in our world.
To address this problem, in our first year PennSEM arranged speeches and mentorships with social entrepreneurs, so that students could learn first-hand from their experiences in creating systemic change for public good. Today, we are continuing towards this goal so that future generations of Penn students will graduate with more inspiration, knowledge, experience, and opportunities in innovation for the public good.

How Can You Help? Everyone A Changemaker
“You must be the change that you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Beyond all of this, PennSEM is really a way of organizing student efforts around the social enterprise sector. We have had decent achievements in the past year, but PennSEM has only scratched the surface of what is possible. We could be doing SO much more to further the social enterprise movement at Penn. Whether or not we go from here to actually making those changes happen though, depends on you.
If you’re diligent, innovative, and passionate about growing Social Entrepreneurship at Penn, then we want to hear from you. This is your platform to make a difference. Whether you want to arrange speaker events, learning sessions, social enterprise visits, summer mentorships, or alumni databases – it doesn’t matter, because you’ll get to do all of that and more alongside a team of driven individuals. While working on what you love, you’ll also learn intensively about the sector, and get to meet some amazing social entrepreneurs.
So, what are you waiting for? Be the change that you want to see in your world.