The economic crisis that has been engulfing the big economies of the west for three years now has been nothing but a remainder of what economists have always known: that capitalism is a cyclic system in which the accumulation of wealth machines make further crisis unavoidable. When the latter occurs, other characteristics of the system become visible, characteristics that are also described in the economics texts: due to its nature, capitalism is incapable of resolving the social demand of all its population, and it's here that all ideologies revolve. There are those who believe that even with its contradictions, there is no better system. There are those who believe that some of its problems need fixing -- by means of a government intervention of diverse magnitude. And there are those who believe that the whole system must be changed for another.
Communism is one of the systems that benefited from the crisis, and even after seeing its catastrophic failure, its presence is still far from being eradicated. After years of ostracism, and in the middle of a horrendous cave-in of the so called "welfare economy," the old philosophers of Europe's left are lifting their heads again, as was documented in a recent article published by the El Pais newspaper of Spain. Communism's historic opportunities have been scarce, and what we are now living in the middle of the current crisis is the flourishing of social protest without a clear definition of pretentions. Lacking a better word that describes the feelings of the thousands that have taken to the streets to protest and manifest their unhappiness with the state of things, reporters have been favoring the word that described the first Spanish protesters: the "indignados" (indignants). Their ideological tendency is yet to become clear, and we still do not know if this could be classified as an anti-system movement. The only thing that is very clear is that they are unhappy with what they see.
The people that met at the Puerta del Sol, at Zuccotti Park, or at the hundreds of places where the movement has reached, are not the only ones that are unhappy. They are, in a matter of speaking, a product of the crisis. But there are other groups of unhappy people too, silent and constant, with many years trying to correct some of the defects of the system, or at least trying to diminish its effects upon those that remain to the margin of the benefits of capitalism. These are people that do not protest and that in general terms help those that cannot protest; they are the "social entrepreneurs".
Between the 15th and the 17th of November the ABC* Foundation, created by a group of Mexican businessmen and led by Emilio Azcarraga, and Ashoka, a global organization that identifies and invests in people that have innovative ideas and techniques to resolve social problems, organized the Continuity Forum in Miami. During the forum, apart from listening to some key note speakers, such as British primatologist Jane Goodall, guests had the chance to hear firsthand the experiences of 34 social entrepreneurs that have, without much funding but with a strong and unbreakable will to help others, established programs that help thousands of people in the continent.
In such a short space it's impossible to list all of them, but we can say that the range of their work is big: the creation of a strong network of 10,000 Brazilian dentists that provide oral health to those that lack the funds to obtain said service; the marketing of agricultural products for small Mexican and Peruvian farmers; the establishment of the logistics needed to benefit from the leftover food from restaurants and hotels in Montreal; the training of people that help the pregnant women that are at risk of miscarriage in Argentina; the examination and provision of vision exams and eyewear in the poorest parts of United States; the treatment of sewage water in Mexico; the financing of higher education for poor students in Colombia; the promotion of social programs for the reinserted in Mexico; the establishment of communication ties between the Guatemalan emigrants and their families back home and the provision of information referring to investment opportunities in their countries...
Differing from charity and traditional philanthropy -- and differing from the enemies of the system -- social entrepreneurship embeds itself in the market's economy and tries to take advantage of its rules and regulations to try to help an ever-growing number of people. Its activities seek an economic return that should allow them to multiply its beneficiaries. And its geographical scope is bigger every day. Its main purpose is to give a human face to that capitalism that today portrays so many unhappy people in the world. They are product of the same problems but react to different kinds of unhappiness. And, until now, they are not mutually incompatible.
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