thrive and prosper – and they will most probably come
from their sons and daughters.
We are constantly telling ourselves that we are lagging
behind and we find evidence to support our case all the
time.
We are not lagging behind in anything
except in our understanding of success,
happiness and meaning.
Personal social responsibility
Social innovation requires people with strong commitment
to their social environment or, in other words, with
personal social responsibility. It means accepting the fact
that the communities we live in and the people who
inhabit them are part of our own comfort zone.
The Russian designer Artemy Lebedev wrote a short but
very revealing text about the comfort zone in Russia and
in other places, which applies fully to Bulgaria. According to
him, the difference in the quality of life in countries around
the world is determined by people`s comfort zone and
not by their material well-being. In our part of the globe,
the traditional comfort zone ends at our front door and is
usually limited to our house, clothes and car. Everything
else that surrounds us is excluded and doesn`t concern
us. Lebedev finds the expansion of the comfort zone very
simple – to begin with, we need to let others in.
We might be doing just fine as separate individuals. But it
is impossible not to be affected by the social environment
around us – we are part of it and in turn it reflects our
own perception of the world. It`s wonderful that we have
a new car, but the potholes on the roads that we bumped
into with the old one are the same. It`s great that we are
renting a big apartment with a spacious terrace, but the
noise from the local bistro won`t stop until late at night.
It`s amazing that we have bought a new designer stroller,
but we will push it along the road in the same way as the
old one because the sidewalk is still occupied by parked
cars (perhaps ours is parked there as well). This is the
reason why personal social responsibility is so important –
it helps us move ahead with our own goals not at the
expense of our environment, but thanks to it.
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Meet Natalie Avery. She is a Sustainable Hospitality
Consultant – she works with restaurants, bars and night
clubs and helps them manage problems with noise and
waste and improve their relations with the community; she
also assists them with complying with laws and regulations
and developing their business in a sustainable way. Her
main objective is to seek common solutions that can
reduce conflicts and benefit all stakeholders.
Our social responsibility is not a utopia or an illusion. It
reflects a fully conscious, rational and pragmatic personal
interest.
Communities
Social innovation won`t start with a complete change in
society as a whole. It will start from much smaller groups
of people who share a common habitat (a city
neighbourhood), or common interests (an amateur
running club), from the communities we belong to and the
people we know.
Hester Street Collaborative stimulates the development of
neighbourhoods in New York with the participation of
everyone who lives in them – from children to the elderly,
on all matters of their concern (from playgrounds to
wheelchair ramps). The residents have a key role from the
very beginning – they present all kinds of projects dealing
with issues of importance to them. Everybody takes part
and nobody is isolated from the process.
Each community has its own priorities. For young families
with children the unresolved problems are not having
enough kindergartens and playgrounds, the lack of
pleasant and comfortable environment for raising children
in their neighborhoods and insufficient conditions for
sports and games. For car owners who travel every day,
the most important issues are potholes on the roads, road
surface marking, traffic control and the availability of
parking spaces.
Each and every one of us belongs to one or several of
those communities, which can become formal or informal
groups for solving problems. The presence of personal
commitment for the realization of a common goal is a
very big prerequisite for social innovation – it stimulates
connections between people and shared problems and
emotions. When you are personally involved in something
and have invested time and (probably some) resources,
the outcome matters to you. TimeHeroes is an example
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of a Bulgarian platform for connecting people willing to get
involved in volunteering with initiatives that can benefit
from their support.
In addition, social innovation and personal social
responsibility offer something extremely valuable for us –
they provide everyone with the opportunity to prosper
wherever they feel most comfortable, wherever they have
expertise and strong interests. At the moment, Bulgaria is
developing its major cities at the expense of smaller towns
and villages, which leads to serious imbalances in every
aspect of development. Involving people in their
communities could halt this process or even reverse it. A
large number of people head to the big cities to do low-
paying jobs that usually bring some money and no
satisfaction whatsoever.
A fresh graduate from school in a small village in
Northwestern Bulgaria will compete in Sofia with many
more like him to work in a call center instead of having a
leading role in his community – as long as he sees an
opportunity to develop his interests there and decides to
make this happen. He can, for example, become a farmer
and people from all over the world could invest in his farm
thanks to platforms such as the Bulgarian startup
Farmhopping. We would welcome teachers and doctors
everywhere – there is always a need for professionals who
practice their craft in a location that suits them, closer to
their families and social environment, where they feel
comfortable, happy and encouraged to grow. Instead, they
move to bigger cities to do something else – anything but
their profession, in fact.
I would like to pay special attention to one particular type
of communities – ethnic groups, especially the Romany.
According to a recent study by the World Bank, in 2020
23% of the new entrants in the Bulgarian workforce will
be Roma. Social innovation could stimulate their personal
growth as well as support their integration in society. An
example for this is Viktor Kirkov’s initiative Bulgarian
Homeless Football, which helps homeless children, most
commonly from a Romany background, to build personal
skills and confidence – not by wandering the streets, but
by competing in the Homeless World Cup. If we can
implement new and successful models in this direction, we
would send a strong signal that we can solve a problem
we have always shied away from.
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