Yeah Samake sits in the office of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. He has brought a delegation including the Malian ambassador to the United States and a small group of concerned citizens.

Sitting in the governor's office, Samake has one purpose - to pool resources to make education a reality for children in his native Mali.

"I have known the pain of going to bed on an empty stomach," Samake said in a press release. "Yet, I was given the exceptional opportunity to go to school in my own village where literacy rates were less than 15 percent of the adult population."

Since Samake's graduation from BYU with a master's in public policy, he has been the director of a non-profit organization called the Mali Rising Foundation that is dedicated to making schools accessible to children in rural Mali, West Africa.

Samake is one of a growing number of LDS social entrepreneurs, someone who uses entrepreneurial skills to address social problems. LDS men and women, like Samake, have started more than 200 non-profit organizations throughout the world.

"A social entrepreneur sees a problem and invents a solution, not to become rich but to solve a problem," said Warner Woodworth, BYU professor of organizational behavior and strategy and pioneer in the field of social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurs are similar to traditional entrepreneurs in the way they address a problem.

"In both cases, they're driven by creativity, ingenuity, and passion but the [social entrepreneur's] passion is to change the world," Woodworth said.

Members of the church are inspired by the teaching that they should be "anxiously engaged in a good cause," he said.

LDS social entrepreneurs are part of a growing worldwide body of people searching for different solutions to social issues.

Utah in particular is a hotbed for social entrepreneurs to get their start because of a culture that encourages innovation and social networking.

Utah is a state that exemplifies the entrepreneurial spirit, according to a 2005 U.S. Small Business Administration study titled "The Innovation-Entrepreneurship NEXUS".

"The results [of the study] were striking," Woodworth said. "Utah, a state comprising less than 1 percent of the nation's population, occupies 30 percent of the study's top 10 spots. Provo, Logan and Salt Lake City rank third, eighth and tenth in the nation, respectively."

This spirit easily translates to social entrepreneurs, he said.

Woodworth was one of the first professors to teach a class on social entrepreneurship. He started at BYU during the 1989-1990 school year. By 2004, 20 similar courses were being taught at other schools. Now more than 340 business professors in 35 nations are involved in the movement at their respective universities, Woodworth said.

Professors' enthusiasm for social entrepreneurship spills over to their students.

Senior English major Kryn Anderson spends his Friday afternoons and evenings overseeing students who teach business classes to Provo's Spanish-speaking population.

As president of MicroBusiness Mentors, Anderson gives of his time to give those around him a hope for a better life. Anderson's organization gives micro-loans of $500 to the graduates of the program.

Anderson has seen the difficulty that many Hispanic families have in getting ahead financially.

"It is exciting to be part of a team that finds ways to make that process of financial stability more feasible," Anderson said.

This, Anderson said, is what makes his work with MicroBusiness Mentors worthwhile.

Another student, Levi Njord, a senior majoring in public health education, co-founded the non-profit organization TURN International to address healthcare issues for street children in the Philippines.

Njord took classes at BYU discussing social issues, but he and his co-founders said talking about the issues wasn't enough for them.

"We wanted to actually do something," he said.

As Njord and his associates worked to design an organization to address the problems facing Filipino children effectively, he realized being a social entrepreneur is a lot of work.

"This has to be an integral part of your life," Njord said. "If you're really passionate about your work, it will happen."

At BYU, the Marriott School of Management hosts the Center for Economic Self-Reliance that pools resources for the study of how to eliminate poverty.

"The center is trying to understand and look at ways that business skills can be used to work on social problems," said Todd Manwaring, director of the Center for Economic Self-Reliance.

The center's goal, as it relates to social entrepreneurship, is to get students to utilize their talents to address the problems of poverty, Manwaring said.

BYU doesn't push students to start their own non-profit organizations, instead encouraging them to make the ideals of social entrepreneurship a part of their daily lives.

Back in the governor's office, Samake smiles as the meeting ends. As a result of this gathering, he has gained the support of yet another important political figure.

This is all in a day's work for Samake. He's just one step closer to bringing education to the children of rural Mali.

This work is Samake's passion.

One of his associates said "he lives it, he breathes it, he is the foundation."

Copyright Brigham Young University 12 Jun 2008