Roger Hamilton founded XL Group as a way of uniting entrepreneurs around the world with one common goal -- giving back. Why being profitable can also be good for society.
This January, 50 entrepreneurs from across the nation will travel to India on a social mission to help alleviate poverty in some of the country's poorest villages. The Pioneer Club, as the group is called, is being headed by Roger Hamilton, founder of the global social enterprise network XL Group, which seeks to unite entrepreneurs worldwide around the common goal of giving back.
In conjunction with The Hunger Project organization, Hamilton and his group of entrepreneurs will work to empower the elected leaders of villages throughout India -- many of whom are women -- and help them gain greater access to resources they need to enact change amongst their populations.
On a much broader scale, Hamilton and his organization, the XL Group -- XL stands for "Extraordinary Lives" -- aims to inspire entrepreneurs to realize their potential to facilitate change in their own communities. The organization, founded in 2001 in Singapore, has expanded rapidly in the past few years and now has a growing presence in cities across North America.
In addition to opening new networking centers across the globe, Hamilton teaches at the Entrepreneur Business School in Bali, puts out a monthly magazine that reports on the latest happenings in the social enterprise community, and runs an XL radio broadcast. In between his many commitments, Hamilton sat down with Inc.com to talk about why he is so dedicated to social enterprises and what it means to lead an "extraordinary life."
What was the idea behind taking a group of American entrepreneurs to India to alleviate poverty?
Because the XL network is connected to social entrepreneurs all over Asia Pacific, we saw that a really powerful way to effective giving was taking a group of entrepreneurs who could see first hand what was happening in India. We connected with the Hunger Project because the CEO of the Hunger Project in Australia is one of the members within our network.
And what the Hunger Project does is it contributes not just money but also time to train the women in India in the most impoverished villages towards taking elected roles where they can really affect change. We will be training 50,000 women who have elected roles and whose decisions affect 15 million people in India, which is about 8 to 10 percent of the extreme poor in the country. The trip that we're all going to make in January is coinciding with the 60th commemoration of Gandhi's death.
What will you actually be doing on the trip to India?
What actually happens is with the funding that The Hunger Project has, they are able to put their grassroots people on the ground in these villages and they are already working there on a permanent basis supporting the women with resources and training them to become self-sufficient.
In terms of the 50 people we are taking -- every one of us are entrepreneurs -- we all come from different industries, and it's everything from biotech to retail to technology. Every one of us comes with different skill sets, and by coming through for this 10 day trip, we will meet with industrial leaders and political leaders of India and then actually be on the ground where the work is happening. We will get involved in the educational process ourselves.
My goal is from this initial group that we call the Pioneer Club, there will be a series of different entrepreneurs within the group who will take on mentorships and sponsorships in all different villages in addition to what we are already contributing. This is not just a one time trip, but something that will be the beginning of ongoing projects, not just in India, but in Africa and in other locations around the world as well.
What do you want entrepreneurs to get out of the experience of going to India?
It's interesting, because when you have a group of entrepreneurs who know how to come up with innovative solutions to problems in their local markets, when they have the opportunity to see challenges that they might not have been aware of and they see how they can actually make a difference somewhere else, it's incredible how quickly change happens.
I'll give you an example of that. When the tsunami happened and it affected so much of Indonesia and Thailand, while all the aid agencies were busy collecting money and seeing what kind of relief they could be sending, there were already entrepreneurs and business groups on the ground sponsoring different villages and finding solutions on the ground for what the [victims] needed. They could actually affect change very, very quickly.
Rather than waiting for the handouts, the entrepreneurs were really looking for the right tools to just get the communities going again. There are a lot of great examples of what happens when entrepreneurs get on the ground and make a difference.
What do you think are some of the common misconceptions about social entrepreneurship?
I think that when you look at some concepts of social entrepreneurship, the idea some people get is that it’s about non-profits looking for ways to be more entrepreneurial, or it's entrepreneurs who are running businesses where they simply give their profits to charity.
Then someone like Muhammad Yunus [founder of Grameen Bank] comes along and wins the Nobel Peace Prize [in 2006] and he's a great example of what a true social entrepreneur is. It's not a matter of him making a profitable business so he can just give money away. What he's actually doing is connecting with people and turning them into entrepreneurs, and as a result, taking millions of people out of poverty in Bangladesh.
