Social Entrepreneur

I love the concept of social entrepreneurism. I believe it can be done in many ways. I see it as creating business in order to help by providing services and opportunities for people and communities. The main difference in my mind between social entrepreneurship and other forms is the focus on helping. One example of providing services to a community that would otherwise be unavailable would be some of the groups that have created simple solar lights that are portable so they can charge during the day and provide light well into the night and are simple enough to be affordable by many in places where electricity is either unreliable or nonexistent like in some of the pacific islands. Having reliable light is a very helpful thing to many communities that they are only just getting. Another example is opportunity like instead of having a large factory that pays its workers next to night and makes one man rich produce your good, finding a good that communities that have less work can make and helping them to organize and create the needed amounts and sell them in a place where there are more customers. This is sharing market opportunity with people and communities that would otherwise not be able to have it. I have a project that I am currently working on and I’m taking this class to help me in building that endeavor. That is the main reason why I was interested in this class. I want to make my goal of helping provide opportunity to work and to sell for groups of people in the pacific and I want to make sure I can setup something that is sustainable and actually does good. Needless to say I am excited for this class.

My name is J.J. Oliphant and I grew up in Utah. I am married and have a daughter who is one and a half and another one on the way in November. My Wife and I met here in 2012 and got married a few years later. She is from Kiribati and we intend to live there after I am finished with my schooling (she already graduated). I am a computer science major and hope to complete the entrepreneur certificate. I love to come up with and play with ideas. I found that computer science was something loved when I took my first class in High school but I since found that I also need something else and I have found that in entrepreneurship. Coming up with ideas and finding applications for things I know and am learning lights up my world. I believe that is what brought me into this program.