What kind of public servant do we need?
Time：2011-07-11
When I went to Nanjing to attend the social entrepreneurship skills training organized by the Cultural and Education Department of the British Embassy, people with public interest tendencies piled up, and their sense of moral superiority flew all over the place, especially the volunteers who had been working in the west for many years, as if they had just climbed the snowy mountains and crossed the grassy meadows, and they had a lot of self-sacrificing stories to share with the others. The teacher's words sobered everyone up a bit, "Everyone wants to make the world a better place, the point is, if we can't even take care of our families, do we have the ability to make the world a better place."
I once heard Mr. Zhang Ruilin of the Asoka Foundation ask an open-ended question at a forum about whether there were more social problems 100 years ago or more social problems now. Most people here felt that there are more social problems now.
In later discussions, we tend to think that it is not that there are more social problems now than before, but that our ability to solve social problems has not progressed much in 100 years, and that there is not much difference between the charitable organizations and volunteer movements of 100 years ago and those of today in terms of the organizational forms and the ability to consolidate resources, and that we can turn back and look at the development of technology and business. If we look at the development of science and technology and business, it goes without saying that science and technology is an era in 10 years, and the innovation of organizational forms and systems in business has also advanced over the past 100 years. And these, not by passionate shouting a few slogans achieved, but those who are the best minds trip sewage dry out.The two slogans of the public interest organization NPI recruiting talent are impressive, "Refuse to be cynical," and "Have love but also have the ability," which I wrote about earlier. "Come to be a public service person", that is for the volunteer movement, if we talk specifically about public service practitioners, there is a threshold, we need to have the ability to be an idealist.
Writing here, the question arises. Competent people often need reciprocal treatment, both in terms of social status and material security, can this industry provide that? My friend Huang Kaipeng is a very good volunteer managers, his Green Ribbon Volunteer Service Center from the Wenchuan earthquake disaster relief services to the Shanghai migrant children's education to help are doing very well, and then he went on the non-sincere Do not disturb the program, the site of a female guest questioned the Kaipeng, do public service, why will be paid, "Doing good is not supposed to be selfless dedication? "
The True Love Dream Foundation was launched by several people in the financial sector, who advocate the "principle of non-sacrificial public welfare", which is actually very common sense in developed countries, but at this stage in China, it is still necessary to advocate.
By this time, we can understand why the social enterprise movement is surging, because traditional NGOs lack their own blood-supporting ability, relying on fund-raising and grants, which is unstable, and if there is a socio-economic downturn, the disadvantaged groups will always be the first to suffer the cold. If the NGO itself has the ability to make blood, with the help of those super thunderbolt means invented by the business elite in the past 100 years, not only can the organization develop and grow, but also raise the standard of service to the disadvantaged groups, so what's not to like?It's easy to say that social enterprises need to integrate resources where there are none, and calculate profits where costs cannot be calculated, and that the degree of difficulty and innovation is such that Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett would not have an easy time of it.