In the fall of 2015, the British Council and YES Network Pakistan launched a ‘Changemaker Institute Project” to identify opportunities for building the field of social entrepreneurship as a field of practice and as an academic field in the higher education institutions. The British Council and the YES Network Pakistan joint efforts resulted in: enabled environment for the launching and implementation of social entrepreneurship project in higher education institutions; enhanced capacity of higher education institutions for social enterprise education and possible integration for wider utilization and self-employment of youth by training and seed financing.
The Changemaker Institute Project in Pakistan is the first of its kind in the country. The concept of changemaking (social innovation and social entrepreneurship) is not yet sufficiently integrated in higher education institutions’ culture and curricula. There are no established social innovation or social entrepreneurship professorships, departments and institutes for changemaking in Pakistan.
Higher Education Institutions rarely focus its attention and imagination on teaching students how to turn a vision into reality; how to design and develop social change organizations. The Changemaker Institute Project is launched to help establish an effective eco-system for the development and growth of social entrepreneurship and youth-led social enterprise activity within leading higher education institutions across the country. In particular, the project is launched with the different objectives, such as: a) sensitizing and building capacity of faculty members; b) developing entrepreneurial drive among students (raising awareness and motivation); c) training students in the skills they need to set up a business and manage its growth; d) providing practical opportunity to students to use their undiscovered entrepreneurial talents and e) integrating the concept of social entrepreneurship in the curriculum.