walking . is . overrated

From the blog of Philip Patston…
www.200gr8.com

27 March 2008

Here’s an innovative idea…NOT

You bring around 800 of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs together to celebrate five years of excellence in social innovation. You call it the 2008 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. You hold it at the prestigious Saîd Business School at Oxford University.

You hold the opening plenary at the Sheldonian Theatre on a cold, wet, spring day in March. You forget to open the only wheelchair accessible entrance (at the back). You spend ten minutes trying to work out how to open it, to let the guy in the wheelchair and his PA from New Zealand in. You don’t care that they get soaked waiting.

You spend the next two hours celebrating social entrepreneurship around the world. You talk about respect, dignity, empowerment, culture, context and social change. Then, you hold the opening reception at Trinity College in a tent - there are five steps to negotiate in the rain, a long path and then a trek over grass.

The guy in the wheelchair and his PA from New Zealand give up and go home, cold, wet and disillusioned. You wonder why (or maybe you don’t notice).

*****

This has been my experience of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship this evening. I feel disrespected, undignified, disempowered. My culture has been robbed, I have been denied context and the social change I have been working for in the last 20 years seems completely invisible.

This is a dark moment for me. Obviously “social entrepreneur” is not synonymous with “social graces”.

In the Forum documentation, “discussion, debate and critical questioning” is welcomed. The question is asked: “What are the cultural and contextual barriers that social entrepreneurs need to overcome to create sustainable change?”

If I am the first social entrepreneur who uses a wheelchair to attend the Forum, then I think discussion, debate and critical questioning is needed. If social entrepreneurs are asking about the cultural and contextual barriers they need to overcome to create sustainable change, then I suggest they need to look a little closer to home. They need to examine the cultural and contextual barriers they are creating for their own.

I feel betrayed, angry and disillusioned. In 2008, I think I have a right to be.

Philip Patston
www.philippatston.com
philip@diversityworks.co.nz