THU AUG 18 05

		Sociopreneurism. At Harvard, they're handing out fellowships to 20 students who want to "use the skills of the marketplace to solve social problems innovatively," reports Alan Finder in The New York Times (8/17/05). "This generation of students expects more out of their careers, beyond the initial business success and financial gain that people generally assume business students are interested in," says Jane Wei-Skillern of Harvard. "They envision community engagement as a core part of what they do." J. Gregory Dees, a Fuqua School professor at Duke, notes that this interest marks a significant change: "I remember a time when a lot of folks who were interested in social issues saw business as part of the problem, not part of the solution." Some folks "link this change to the spirit of commercial innovation that produced the digital economy." The notion is far from new, though: "Dr. Dees, who is believed to have taught the first course on social entrepreneurship, said he first suggested the idea when he was teaching at Harvard in 1989. He was told it that it was not an appropriate subject for a graduate school of business." The field is still emerging: "Right now the field is dominated by a hope and a dream," says Paul C. Light of N.Y.U. There are some solid case studies, however, "like the economist Mohammed Yunus ... who created an unusual lending institution to grant micro-loans, often for as little as $5 or $10, to enable desperately poor women to expand small businesses in weaving baskets and making pots. "Dr. Dees and other professors use the case to discuss with students why conventional banks would not grant such tiny loans and how Professor Yunus managed to make his lending institution profitable." The professor's success seems to have inspired 23-year-old Uri Pomerantz, jozoor.org, to develop "a non-profit group to create jobs on the West Bank and Gaza by making very small loans." Uri comments: "Economics is not the full issue or the core issue ... but if you can't solve the economic issues, you are not going to have peace." Another student, 24-year-old Rob Lucas, created a website, The Teacher's Lounge, "to help teachers collaborate on lesson plans," and a third, Jolie Delja, also 24, hopes to open a center "to advise teenage girls of the risks of drinking and smoking if they become pregnant." Their fellowships were made possible by a "$10 million dollar gift from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation," cbrf.org, whose founder, appropriately enough, "built a fortune by creating a company that provides college loans to students ineligible for government loans." Tim Manners, editor