Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship

Interactions among social, economic and environmental dynamics

Select activities which best meet your needs and take a look at the Resources page for tools which might help.

Design activities which enhance understanding of the concept and lead learners to conclude that social, economic and environmental concerns must all be addressed to achieve sustainability.

Then add learning activities and resources which address the three aspects in more detail.

Stories of unsustainability

An oil spill caused environmental destruction along a coastline. Aid money came in and the GDP went up. One might conclude from this economic indicator that there should be more oil spills for economic development. That would not be sustainable.

etc.

Experiential Learning

This is your next step in the community engagement process. Activities here will be extended in future modules/units and build on previous.

The pattern will generally be:

Preparation and planning ... field work/ quest ... learn ... come back and share ... create links under Community ....

By this stage, plans for long term collaboration should be being made.

In close collaboration with the community ... develop and agree on an evaluation framework.

Build evaluation into previous stages, most notably the planning stage but actually, from the very beginning covering anything you have done and produced individually or as a team of students, or in collaboration with CBOs, etc..

Thought Experiment

Does it ever make sense to consider any one of the three aspects of sustainability alone (i.e. economic, social, environmental)?

What Next?

Putting it all Together (Social Entrepreneurship) or some other part of the Curriculum (e.g. for revision or a wider perspective).