Injaz: Social Entrepreneurship in Jordan

Social entrepreneurship is all the rage these days – save the world and make a buck at the same time – who can argue with that? It’s popularity in months past has been widely bolstered in part due to Muhammad Yunus’ success at Grameen Bank. Now Nicholas Kristof is writing about it as well.

While most social entrepreneurship ventures are based in the U.S. and focus towards the developing world, there are few that have emerged from the developing world itself. This one comes from Jordan:

One of the social entrepreneurs here is Soraya Salti, a 37-year-old Jordanian woman who is trying to transform the Arab world by teaching entrepreneurship in schools. Her organization, Injaz, is now training 100,000 Arab students each year to find a market niche, construct a business plan and then launch and nurture a business.

We often don’t hear of such news coming out of the region, but Jordan is nearly exceptional in this regard and has taken great strides (some unrealized) towards investing in its only asset: its people. The YEA has also done a lot to support and bolster entrepreneurship in Jordan and the region. (We covered them earlier here).