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	Social entrepreneurs provide the inspiration at Davos by Nicholas Kristof New York Times USA   January 27, 2008   With the American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics.   But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves. These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum (not only because they’re half the age of everyone else).   Andrew Klaber, a 26-year-old playing hooky from Harvard Business School to come here, is an example of the social entrepreneur. He spent the summer after his sophomore year in college in Thailand and was aghast to see teenage girls being forced into prostitution after their parents had died of AIDS.   So he started Orphans Against AIDS (www.orphansagainstaids.org), which pays school-related expenses for hundreds of children who have been orphaned or otherwise affected by AIDS in poor countries. He and his friends volunteer their time and pay administrative costs out of their own pockets so that every penny goes to the children.   Mr. Klaber was able to expand the nonprofit organization in Africa through introductions made by Jennifer Staple, who was a year ahead of him when they were in college. When she was a sophomore, Ms. Staple founded an organization in her dorm room to collect old reading glasses in the United States and ship them to poor countries. That group, Unite for Sight, has ballooned, and last year it provided eye care to 200,000 people (www.uniteforsight.org).   In the ’60s, perhaps the most remarkable Americans were the civil rights workers and antiwar protesters who started movements that transformed the country. In the 1980s, the most dynamic people were entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who started companies and ended up revolutionizing the way we use technology.   Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is. John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan title their new book on social entrepreneurs “The Power of Unreasonable People.”   Universities are now offering classes in social entrepreneurship, and there are a growing number of role models. Wendy Kopp turned her thesis at Princeton into Teach for America and has had far more impact on schools than the average secretary of education.   One of the social entrepreneurs here is Soraya Salti, a 37-year-old Jordanian woman who is trying to transform the Arab world by teaching entrepreneurship in schools. Her organization, Injaz, is now training 100,000 Arab students each year to find a market niche, construct a business plan and then launch and nurture a business.   The program (www.injaz.org.jo) has spread to 12 Arab countries and is aiming to teach one million students a year. Ms. Salti argues that entrepreneurs can stimulate the economy, give young people a purpose and revitalize the Arab world. Girls in particular have flourished in the program, which has had excellent reviews and is getting support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. My hunch is that Ms. Salti will contribute more to stability and peace in the Middle East than any number of tanks in Iraq, U.N. resolutions or summit meetings.   “If you can capture the youth and change the way they think, then you can change the future,” she said.   Another young person on a mission is Ariel Zylbersztejn, a 27-year-old Mexican who founded and runs a company called Cinepop, which projects movies onto inflatable screens and shows them free in public parks. Mr. Zylbersztejn realized that 90 percent of Mexicans can’t afford to go to movies, so he started his own business model: He sells sponsorships to companies to advertise to the thousands of viewers who come to watch the free entertainment.   Mr. Zylbersztejn works with microcredit agencies and social welfare groups to engage the families that come to his movies and help them start businesses or try other strategies to overcome poverty. Cinepop is only three years old, but already 250,000 people a year watch movies on his screens — and his goal is to take the model to Brazil, India, China and other countries.   So as we follow the presidential campaign, let’s not forget that the winner isn’t the only one who will shape the world. Only one person can become president of the United States, but there’s no limit to the number of social entrepreneurs who can make this planet a better place.
	Bonded labourers, children eke out existence at brick kilns by IRIN News Pakistan   Lahore, Jan 2008   Thousands of children work as bonded labourers in Pakistan''s brick kilns.   Twelve-year-old Salamat Ahmed works up to 14 hours a day in a brick factory in Sheikhupura, about 100km north of Lahore. His hands bear burn marks from placing bricks in the kiln.   "I have been doing this work since I was six. Even when I was younger, I helped my mother. We ''belong'' to the brick kiln owner and cannot leave this place," Salamat told IRIN, before he was pulled away by his older brother, Karamat, who said: "We don''t want any trouble."   Despite his arduous life, Salamat, who has never been to school, wears a big grin across his face. He dreams of becoming a cricket player, or riding his own motorcycle.   Salamat, his parents and three siblings, are among the 1.7 million bonded labourers that the International Labour Organization (ILO) says exist in Pakistan.   Despite laws banning bonded labour, including the Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act of 1992, forced labour, often through debt bondage, remains widespread.   "What happens is that employers, in this case the brick kiln owners, advance sums of money to the labourers to meet urgent needs. Because the wages paid to the labourers are so low, the loans cannot be paid back even over many years, and the workers cannot leave the kiln as they are indebted to the owners," said I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).   Over half a million bonded labourers are working at brick kilns, says a 2003 study by the Karachi-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), PILER (Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research). The study, carried out at the request of the ILO, concluded that nearly half these workers are women or children.   The report said family labour by children aged 10-14 producing unbaked bricks, and of male juveniles (14 -17 years) in other work groups, is a central part of work at the 6,000 or so brick kilns across the country, 5,000 of them in the Punjab.   When female children are not working at the kiln, they will be doing domestic chores, leaving other family members free to manufacture bricks. The advances families are able to get are most often larger when more members work at the kiln, and this promotes the use of children as a labour force.   Most children engaged at kilns do not go to school and have never regularly attended one.   "I sent my daughter to school for three months, but we need her help to make ends meet," said Wazir Khan, 32, a labourer at a brick kiln in the Batapur area of Lahore, close to the Indian border. Wazir and his family are Afghans, and are paid piece rates, i.e. depending on the number of unbaked bricks they can produce in a day.   With the help of his daughter, Azma, 10, and two sons, aged 8 and 7, Wazir and his wife make enough bricks to earn around US$50 a month. "Any less, and we would starve," Wazir said.   Over the past three or four years NGOs and social welfare organisations have persuaded brick kiln owners to set up small schools for children working for them.   More and more such schools are being set up, and several dozen are now operating, but the fact remains that most are inadequately housed in tiny rooms or sheds.   The standards of education they can offer are limited - and for the most part they depend for their survival entirely on the goodwill of their brick kiln owner.   Yet even these limited facilities offer children, who usually attend them for a few hours a day, some semblance of opportunity, some ray of hope. They also offer an escape from the risks and hardship of life at the kiln, where injuries while using sharp implements to carve out mud, or from the hot ovens, are not uncommon. In most cases, the labourers, including the children, have no access to even rudimentary first aid.   "We must work here because we are poor. But now I go to school and one day I will be an educated man who can do something else," says Dilawar, 12, who has worked at a kiln in Lahore, where his family is bonded, for three years.
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