Transforming Adolescents into Social Entrepreneurs: A Time When Adolescents Become Reflexive Social Entrepreneurs

Dilemma

According to the common belief, adolescents are not considered to be suitable for social entrepreneurial activities because they are still in a developing stage and lack wisdom. Nevertheless, Skoll and Ashoka have successfully engaged many young social entrepreneurs in solving social problems. Naturally, a question emerges as to what approaches to be adopted for turning young people into successful social entrepreneurs.

Theory

Theory of reflective practice is used to analyse the case. Research concerning social entrepreneurs is replete with the case study method. Autobiographical approach is used to write this case.

Phenomenon Studied

Learning is based on information, skills and knowledge, which influences performance. However, such learning may stop at the boundaries due to the limited capacity. If the learners reconstruct the self and the reality that they made, learning will increase exponentially.

Case Context

Based on two biographies of social entrepreneurs, the case shows how they transformed themselves through reflexive learning and became social entrepreneurs.

Findings

Reflexive learning may be a promising perspective to understand how adolescents can become social entrepreneurs. If the young engage in reflexive transformation and simultaneously act on their passion to solve social problems, they will become social entrepreneurs.

Discussions

Regardless of age, it is hard to believe that everyone can be a social entrepreneur. However, this case study narrates the stories of the two young persons who achieved success by thinking about the two different fundamental assumptions reflexively. The two very basic inquiries are ‘Who I am?’ and ‘Why I work?’. On occasions, the young social entrepreneurs realize a sense of purposeful life through their practices in everyday work. On receiving the rewards for their engagement, they must have felt like a revelation of spirituality.

Introduction

Among scholars, social entrepreneurship is one of the favoured research streams. As the complexity in society increases, more audacious eyes are necessary to become resilient; that is, we need the type of people who live with a higher purpose for virtue and who possess the capacity to see the world from a standpoint that we have never seen. It is not a transient trend but a long-lasting stream (Volini et al., 2020).

Researchers have displayed less interest in probing social entrepreneurship among adolescents (Gupta et al., 2020). The premier graduate schools in well-developed countries inspire people to pursue business backgrounds to get into the new field of profession. In developed countries, academia is an ecosystem of adult practitioners who believe in first engaging in formal education to develop their cognitive capacity and form a stable self-identity.

Unfortunately, many problems related to human rights, justice and equality are ignored in the world. The young generation inherits problems created by adults. For decades, social entrepreneur foundations like Skoll and Ashoka have been conducting programmes for the young (Skoll–Emerging Leaders Initiatives; Ashoka—Young Change Makers). They practically noticed that it worked well for the human development of the recipients even during the adolescent stage.

An intriguing question arises ‘Why does it work?’ Based on transformative learning in adulthood, its process caused by a mid-life crisis is inevitable but one of the difficult attempts. Because the psychological immune system (Kegan & Lahey, 2009) hides the necessity for the insidious change, adults continue to live life as it is without any doubt. A deep-rooted but unconscious mindset prevents them from transforming into a growth mindset (Dweck, 2016). We expect they can transform quickly during the adolescent period more than older age because they are still developing. Surely, not all adolescents can become social entrepreneurs, but such research can provide new insights for the development of adult learning and social entrepreneurs. Based on the two autobiographical interviews, this case aims to find hypotheses of the transformation process for a social entrepreneur without formal education. A comparison of the two biographies is presented in Table 1.

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Table 1.

A Summary of the Biographies

	Mr Yabe	Mr Matsue
Birthplace and upbringing	Saitama City: 3 siblings, democratic family culture	Osaka City: 1 sibling, had ‘ADHD’ but was loved by parents
Primary and secondary education	Public schools	Public schools and private high school
Higher education	Education major in Waseda University in Tokyo	Bio-engineering major in Kyotosangyo University in Kyoto
Job experiences	Fulltime job in Australia and Ashoka Japan: part-time in Japan	part-time in Japan: a franchisee of prep school for 5 years
Social activities	Community development through education for the young	Co-learning communities with diverse participants

Source: Data came from the interviews and the website.

The Case: Mr Hiroaki Yabe, the Director of Non-profit Organization Sokoage

As the most innate relationship, the family builds the foundation of social interactions unconsciously. Mr Yabe’s father had travelled and resided in different countries around the world. He had worked with the Japanese Government as a local agent and possessed a Barcelona University diploma. When Yabe was young, his father got a permanent job in a public high school as an English teacher. His mother ran a self-employed business which unfortunately failed and created a huge liability. His parents acknowledged that the family was not wealthy enough to send him to a fancy university. Almost all students go to college without any doubt because the school curriculum was designed for the entrance exam to a college. Indeed, he could choose any course of life—further studies in Japan or abroad or starting a business. However, derailing from the social norm was hard to accept and even seemed to be shameful in general. When he asked his parents which path to choose, they suggested there was no correct answer to that.

After 6 months, he left for Australia to work and study English for a year. When he moved to Cairns, he got a job at a Japanese travel agency for the rest of his stay. It was time that he reflected on the inner belief deeply because life in Australia was not the goal that he cherished. His English ability seemed to be good enough for his everyday life, and he wanted to live in Australia, but he did not. Although he received an invitation to work with a full-time status, he declined it and went back to Japan. Surprisingly, before entering the university at the age of 23, he started working as an instructor to participants of the billiard championship in Japan. A year later, he made it to the semi-final. Oddly enough, he acknowledges it was a critical point in his life. He knew this was not for him and moved on; that is, whenever he faced uncertainty, he sincerely listened to his inner voice and chose the option that was coherent to his vision.

It was his sophomore year. He took a social campaign tour by ordinary bicycle and ran the campaign from south to Japan’s north end. In his preparation, he approached companies and received enough donations for the campaign. Through the process, he learnt a lot about public relations, the nature of media and their political attitudes. On the way to the destination, by chance, he stayed at a hotel in Kesennuma for days. Heartily, he enjoyed the human connection with the hotel owner and Kesennuma locals. Overall, his college life seemed to be that of an ordinary student, and he felt attracted to become a tourist agent in Australia, where he worked in the past and where the firm agreed to employ him as a full-time worker.

On 11 March, however, earthquake and tsunami destroyed lives of hundreds and thousands of people on Japan’s east coast. Shortly after the earthquake, he and his friends entered Kesennuma with clothes to be given to the hotel owner whom he met on his way to the north of Japan. They stayed at his hotel to help the owner out of the chaos. Although the hotel was not a designated evacuation centre, they stayed at the hotel until the shelter for the evacuees opened. During this tent life of 3 months, Narumiya, Yabe and Saito met at the volunteer centre, and they talked with Sokoage—a non-profit organization (NPO).

Yabe Shares His Feelings and Thoughts

The moment Fukushima Nuke Plants imploded, it dawned on me that I had to burn my entire life here in Japan to keep our lives safe. To be honest, I partly gave up making changes in the Japanese society. However, it shook me up. It was a critical point in my life with no turning back. I withdrew my promise to work in Australia and went to Kesennuma. I would not have become a social entrepreneur if the earthquake had not hit the east coast of Japan at that moment.

Months after starting his NPO, he was hired as a full-time staff of the Youth Venture Program (YV) in Ashoka JAPAN. The YV Program started again with Yabe’s full support; it was getting better and bigger after adding Tohoku YV Program. He was constantly traveling around Japan to look for new applicants for the programme, searching in the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), making leads and reporting back to superiors. It was clear that he truly enjoyed it as if it were a calling. Not surprisingly, Ashoka JAPAN provided him an opportunity to meet the global social entrepreneurs and learn how to be a social entrepreneur. However, he decided to quit Ashoka JAPAN in 2018 because he wanted to go back to being a social entrepreneur and join Sokoage. His work at Kesennuma was his core identity.

Just after the earthquake, all volunteers had to adapt to the ‘battlefield’. Special rescue taxation helped volunteers with their livelihood, but such a supportive situation gradually changed with. After the natural screening, very few experienced volunteers remained there as professionals. It was time to decide whether they stay there as a professional or not. They registered Sokoage as a certified NPO in 2012. One of the biggest struggles was arranging financial aid, but they also needed the psychological credentials to become professionals. Volunteering is precious personal work for the recipients. However, once they accepted it as a profession, it needed missions and visions rationalized by the philosophy to solve problems ingrained in society. During the interview, the former hotel owner first questioned Yabe’s passion because he felt that becoming a social activist is ridiculous. As the weeks passed by, the owner started gaining trust on Yabe because he walked the talk. He realized that Yabe genuinely wanted to become a social activist.

When the NPO started, it gave various opportunities for students to restart proper education. They ran private classes to supplement their shortage of learning hours since schools had turned into shelters for evacuees. After getting the certification of teaching, they taught schoolchildren in relaxed class environments; students disclosed their anxiousness as well as their dreams. As they were getting to know one another, the NPO members realized that they could leverage on this generation to rebuild the city in the future. All members were determined to live in the city; moreover, they vowed to work with the people in the regions for the long term. Throughout the discussions about NPO, they concluded that increasing self-awareness about social values was critical for NPO for long-term support for the people of the region.

Co-founder Narumiya Talks About the Experimentations

We focused on practical programmes for high school students to intervene in real society as a social entrepreneur from scratch. No matter how small the activity, it gives them a precious reflection on who they are and what they want. Engaging in the real problem is the core of the NPO. We always inquire about the same things as the profession of a social entrepreneur needs.

The earthquake put a brake on all economic activities in the fishing and agriculture sectors. It was said that the recovery of those sectors would take decades and that many evacuees who got jobs outside the city would never come back to the town. The town was on the verge of disappearing and the mayor of the city could not help but face the reality. Moreover, the municipality did not have any clue on how to deal with it. The education ward did not come forward to support. However, with the support from the adult learning ward, NPO started small classes in high school. Through further experimentation, NPO started comprehensive programmes with students in junior and high schools in Kesennuma. The purpose was to increase self-awareness and inculcate a sense of community. It was a big success. NPO continued to evolve in a self-developmental programme to become a stable organization in the town.

The Case: Syushi Matsue, the Director of PaKT Limited Liability Company

In primary school, teachers thought Syushi Matsue should not pursue studies as they considered him to be a poor student because of his impulsive behaviour which was a result of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In his sixth grade in elementary school, an internship teacher taught his class for a few weeks. Due to the teacher’s teaching style, he felt that teaching was the best job and decided to be a teacher. Although it upset his family, he always thanked his parents for their unconditional love.

Throughout the education, his behaviour stayed the same, and his mediocre academic record continued. At the time of the high school entrance exam, teachers suggested that he might seek admission to a high school of less repute, but he was desperate to become a teacher after college education. Finally, he took admission in a private high school of mediocre standard that was not competitive enough to get into top universities. His high school experience was boring because commuting time was tiringly long and because he found the condensed subject study was rote learning. Surprisingly, he could pay full attention to study for the university entrance exam.

One day in summer, an invitation letter from a university came to his class teacher. Though it was not the university he wanted to go to, the teacher suggested that the university might fit him. In his freshman year, he noticed his English ability was too low to read the textbooks. He joined the English-Speaking Society to increase his ability. He had also joined a drama group despite his lack of experience in acting. He enjoyed diverse social life in junior year. It was a big surprise to him when he was named as the stage director. At the same time, he took charge as the managing director for English drama in the neighbouring college network. It was not just a spokesperson to share information between four colleges, but the students regularly worked together to perform a drama. On top of that, he willingly took part in all kinds of student activities, like dome administrator and volunteer staff of formal college activities, besides doing a part-time job.

Four years passed, and he stayed in the university for another year. He continued his college life without looking for a formal teacher’s status or a job in a company. One day, the prep school owner, who had been working since his senior year, asked him about his plan after graduation. Listening to his thoughts and reviewing his performance, the owner proposed him if he was willing to run a new branch as a sole representative. Although the suggested salary was just US$500 a month, he thought it worth accepting because he was an apprentice of management. In those days, most college students might not have chosen this option, but for him, it was attractive because it offered a sense of freedom.

Meanwhile, long before becoming independent of franchising contracts, he started experimenting with designing a new learning place. After 2 more years, he started to run his branch when one of his friends called him to work as a facilitator in some large summer camp for the young. While working at this camp, one day he asked the participants to reflect and discuss about the activities at the camp and provide their opinion about it. During the reflection, a participant voiced against him. She said, ‘Today’s activities were not happy experiences because everybody in the group rushed to get things done faster and more efficiently than other groups. I did not like it at all’. The participant expressed her honest reflection in the group, but the rest felt it differently. They thought that all activities were competitive games and winning was a self-evident goal. All the discussion stopped and pin-drop silence lasted for a few minutes. It was at that moment that he realized what reflection meant.

He felt that something was wrong in the daytime classes, but he could not figure it out. Students frequently rushed to grab the best and quick-fix answer for their work and lives. They demanded it, and he replied as per their requirement. Meanwhile, the camp participant told him it was critical to pay full attention to participants’ feelings and relationships. The participant’s voice suggested such dissent was tightly associated with the problems he noticed and the way that he tried to solve them at the new learning place. Learning was not the only goal to achieve; increasing self-awareness through their relationships was also needed. Since he received unconditional love throughout his challenging life, the sense of self-reliance was never a concern to him. His reflective life began with his co-learning classes. Naturally, he was among the most non-performing students in his classes, but he was determined to change that.

He had noticed a serious social problem in the job market in Japan. Roughly, 30% of graduates quit their first jobs within 3 years. Keeping the situation in mind and from what he learnt during his time at the summer camp, he started classes for college students to talk about humanistic issues, such as friendship, growth, jobs, family, money and meaningful work, life and others. His classes became an experiential learning place where broad themes like a meaningful life played the agent role to exchange honest feedback for increasing self-awareness. As a facilitator, he had to wait for significant time until they began to express their honest feelings. By doing so, they could increase self-awareness and skills to manage their emotion for better human relationships. Gradually, they started expressing their honest feelings about other issues as well. The meaning of the learning community was getting clear through repetitive experimentations. Eventually, a learning community for multi-learners came to shape. In the daytime, the college students came to talk about what life meant learn about the students taught the children in the prep school.

He Tells us About His Feelings

I was proud to be a multi-tasker and to achieve above average goals. However, I learnt from the participants that they wanted to enjoy the activities whether they achieved the goal or not. That is when I became aware of the purpose of life and the meaning of work and life.

One day in a daytime class, a participant introduced the Finnish education system because she wrote a research paper about that. Matsue was interested in the system because it was quite similar to what he was looking for at that time. Matsue started prep school as his livelihood, but his intention was different. Because prep school was seen as the shadow of the formal education system, he was always looking for an opportunity to shift to his ideal school. The Finnish education system was the best of which he longed to apply. As the result of his research, he founded PaKT Company in 2010 and registered it as LLC in 2016. Manabino-ba (learning space) is the core of all PaKT businesses; it is a learning community for multipurpose learners. It appears to be a prep school for children. However, instructors are not teachers who transfer the knowledge; instead, they are keen to learn through teaching, studying and exchanging dialogue in the learning community.

Therefore, college students become instructors who teach school subjects in a face-to-face manner. Children sit at their favourite places in the room to learn the subjects. The instructors approach them to listen to their problems and guide them to the answer if they need. At the same time, everybody can use the same room as a study or working space. It may seem noisy and inefficient to learn, but it became a quintessential principle for Matsue. Learning is not just to absorb information; instead, all learners share their social influences to elevate the social self as a learner. Hopefully, adults play an exemplary role for all prep students, and honestly, the students reflect what they see. To make the ideal place real, Matsue must behave as an incarnation of the banner. However, unexpected things happen, and he is struggling with being true to what he is saying. When it happens, it is the best opportunity to think of learning for a meaningful life.

Except for a full-time employee, diverse adults, such as college or graduate school students and freelancers, work at PaKT. Besides, PaKT lends a shared house to stay there at a relatively cheaper cost with attractive benefits. In the house, students and Matsue share their life in a self-help manner. It seems to be a community where people with diverse dreams can share their lives under a roof like a second home.

Discussions and Conclusions

Both cases deal with the way young can grow fast as a social entrepreneur. However, the former case describes an approach to become a social entrepreneur from a student who has a primitive but aggressive social interest in becoming a professional social entrepreneur. In contrast, the latter case focuses on a different path to becoming social entrepreneurs because, at first, Matsue focuses on the for-profit entrepreneur in the education business. Somewhere in the early stage of life, a critical point had come to his life. It dawned on him that everything, that is, from being an ADHD student to his serious self-reflection in the project and the study meeting with college students, is all purified into the purpose that he should work as a social activist in education. Because both approaches to the social entrepreneurs always struggle with making enough money to survive, the author purposely deals with contrasting cases.

As a socializing process, family culture influences children’s way of life. Yabe’s family forms his cognitive foundation, literally. His journey from Australia, Billiard, university, NPO and to a college lecturer shows how it distinctively affects him more than ordinary family culture does.

However, all choices that he made on his own shaped his journey and increased his self-awareness significantly, despite his age.

In the university, his identity as a social activist abated because of Japanese society’s backlash; eventually, he decided to escape into Australian life. Coincidentally, the earthquake brought him back from an amateur. His decisive return to live as a social entrepreneur made his life a crucial journey, which meant sacrificing his life for social welfare. Becoming a lecturer in college proved his sacrifice was genuine.

At the same time, he realized that he was not an expert but a thoughtful listener who helped students find their problems. It is his core identity, which he embodied through all his work at Kesennuma and Ashoka JAPAN (he served Ashoka JAPAN as a full-time staff from 2011 to 2018). He received precious opportunities to make his social role clear through learning from renowned global fellows in Ashoka. Naturally, he quit it to go back to Kesennuma because he felt confident living with his core identity.

There is evidence that people around him believed him to be a frugal caregiver, and they allowed him to take on another challenge. It seems as if he believed in the power of deep moral good. During repetitive and extended interviews with Mr Yabe, his speech stumbled, but his struggles suggested that he was trying to assure his high moral coherence.

Based on Matsue’s biography, the primary education system gave him an identity of a poor student. He believed that he could grow as slowly as he wanted. Only after the reality that he escaped pushed him to a corner psychologically did his competitive learning start. His new identity prevented him from having the joy of learning during high school; hence, his core identity seems to remain primitive.

Meanwhile, college life taught him the worth of trying new things on his own. New identity started to bloom as a high achiever in multiple goals. Eventually, his new identity proved him confident in extraverted human relations. Also, it gave him a sense of self-reliance about how he lived. That is why he chose his way of work and life regardless of ordinary job hunting; then, his self-made man image was the core of his business life.

Coincidentally, the summer camp experiences suggested he should pay full attention to participant feelings in their communication. It dawned on him that he did not do it at all. He became an arrogant teacher unintentionally; it was a critical point in his life. He was a poor student and was treated negatively due to ‘ADHD’. Due to this experience, he learnt the necessity to tolerate painful situations. He reflected on the purpose of life and that made him an extremely honest person. It seems his core identity was in crisis, but he accepted it as his life’s purpose. Accordingly, he tried to stay a learner as if he were a loser who continuously learns from his every single mistake. He thinks learning through deep reflective practice is essential for all learners to grow (Johns, 2017). His life is not to become a teacher but to be a ‘Reflective Practitioner’ as a co-learner in Manabino-ba and a resident of his shared house (Schön, 1983).

Although research limitations must be palpable because of two biographies, an acceptable hypothesis would be the following. If adolescents reflect on themselves and the communities where they live in an authentic way, adolescents can become social entrepreneurs as the seniors do. As a result of summarizing above, an idea of reflexivity may be the best for this conclusion. Conceptual arguments to discern the difference between reflection and reflexivity continue, but the common understanding is that in general, reflection means looking back to know what we did from others in human development through to know what they are doing or did. When we apply it to the self, it means objectively thinking of self, whereas reflexivity means ‘an unsettling of the basic assumption (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005)’ of self and the society we live like culture regulates all actions to a certain degree, but nobody can be aware of it because of the subconscious governing system. If we inquire self, we should take a reflexive way to know our basic assumptions, which construct our reality.

Both the stories tell us about an essential action required for human development: reflexive actions to fulfil respective meaningful lives. In the critical points of their life, both Yabe and Matsue accepted the possibility to understand what it was. For Yabe, it was time when he saw an implosion of Nuke plants and entered Kesennuma as an unknown field. For Matsue, it was pin-drop silence in the summer camp. They felt a sense of not knowing because they noticed their basic assumptions turned useless. Fortunately, they did not try to replace their assumptions for any alternative; instead, they opened to accept any possibility from the heart because they were adolescents.

Besides, the stories suggest another critical moment to embrace all possibilities. For Yabe, it was a place where he was struggling with being an authentic social entrepreneur. For Matsue, it was a place where he was acting as a student of his life despite being the owner of the PaKT (acronym in the Finnish language. P: the project, Alue: region, Koulutus: education, and Taide: arts). They felt a critical inner voice for society to challenge because they questioned a part of society’s basic assumption. That is the existing reason ‘why they work’; undoubtedly, it is paradoxical. Therefore, they continuously struggle with making a pragmatic resolution between a practical reason for making money and an authentic reason for fulfilling their meaningful life. Fortunately, they did not try to ally with a polarized idealistic political group; instead, they were opened to accept any possibility from the heart because they were adolescents.

Throughout the biographies, spiritual development could exist because they say a sense of consciousness comes down to their minds during their work. It must be a privileged time to receive the true rewards of their sacrifice as if it were a spiritual revelation.