Miller Center’s Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI®) programs have accelerated more than 700 social enterprises worldwide. Silicon Valley mentors accompany social entrepreneurs through structured exercises to help them scale their impact. Collectively, GSBI social enterprises have benefited the lives of more than 250 million people in 65 countries.
Soon after their founding in 1540, the Jesuits established an expansive network of educational institutions around the world, embodying what we now call social entrepreneurship. In his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis calls “the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development.” Social entrepreneurship is a transformative response to this call.
The Jesuit-in-Residence experience is customized to the vocation of the individual Jesuit. The program’s pioneer, Fr. Phil Cooke, SJ, organized GSBI Boost accelerator programs in Nicaragua and the Philippines. Under the leadership of Fr. Bossou Constant, SJ, we created a Jesuit Network for Social Entrepreneurship, including four provinces in Africa, one in the United States, and one in China, with 18 affiliated Jesuits.
Miller Center imagines that this network will leverage Jesuit social and educational ministries to amplify the global impact of social entrepreneurship. The vocations of the Jesuits in this booklet illustrate the power of purpose in their approach.
