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What's really going to change the world...
By AprillBrandon in Pop Goes the Culture
March 13, 2008

Forget the highly charged race to the White House going on. In fact, forget world leaders all together.

What's really going to change the world is social entrepreneurship.

You can say a lot of bad things about our current culture (I mean, the whole "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon has set us back at least a good 50 years...thanks Joe Francis...no, really, thanks butthead). But one area we as a society seem to be thriving at is social awareness and ambition, a combination that has lit a fire under young people's behinds.

In a New York Times opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof titled "The Age of Ambition,"  (brought to my attention by the fabulous UHV professor Dr. Jim Holm) Kristof delves into the growing numbers of young people who are taking the world's problems into their own hands.

There's 26-year-old Andrew Klaber who started Orphans Against AIDS, which pays school-related expenses for children orphaned by the disease.

Then there is Jennifer Staple, who as a sophomore in college, founded in organization out of her dorm room that collects old eye glasses and redistributes them to poor countries.

And there's also 27-year-old Ariel Zylbersztejn who founded Cinepop, which shows free movies in public parks for Mexicans who can't afford to go to the movies. He has also partnered with social welfare groups to engage the families that come to the movies and help them come up with ways to get out of poverty.

As the article states, "from their dorm rooms, social entrepreneurs are saving the world." While I think its great that so many young people are getting involved in politics and the presidential race, I think we also need to realize that it's not the president who is going to be the most effective at changing the world.

Government has been gridlocked for years at all levels. Bills take years to pass. Reform in any form has to go through about a ba-zillion committees and then often doesn't come to fruition any way.

But a 19-year-old college student can start a foundation from scratch in between classes and make a difference in 200,000 people's lives.

I think too often we think that it's only the powerful or the wealthy or the extremely intelligent who can change the world for the better.

When in fact, the power has always resided with the common people.