CE Solutions: About Us

About Us > Approach

Community Enterprise Solutions works as a “servant leader” to address essential community economic, health and economic needs. We create responses to challenges that are innovative, creative, appropriate, sustainable and compelling where all stakeholders both add and derive value. We design and implement elegant solutions that avoid the “Frankenstein Effect,” the gluing of incompatible elements together that unfortunately so many projects become. We are confident that our social entrepreneurship approach is the optimal means of achieving sustainable impact and mitigating risks. This is an approach that continuously inspires our design, and execution is in effect always searching for a “Nash Equilibrium.” This is loosely defined as the creation and implementation of a set of strategies and tactics such that no stakeholder (villager, village leader, entrepreneur, trainer, leadership, product provider, etc.) has incentive to unilaterally change his or her action. There is no compelling reason to do so. Our efforts continually search for a state of equilibrium whereby a change in actions by any stakeholder would lead them to a suboptimal outcome. We relentlessly seek this state of equilibrium continuously modifying our strategy and tactics.

Although there is no one universal definition used to describe this social entrepreneurship approach, we view it as “more related to leadership than to management” (Schwab Foundation) and thus it is more about the “how” than the “what.” As a starting point, it is helpful to begin with the metaphor “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” to demonstrate the evolutionary nature and impact of this approach.

“Giving fish” is what could traditionally be defined as relief assistance. The most challenging next step in supporting communities/individuals as they endeavor to either build or re-build their lives is development assistance. This is the “teach a man to fish.” Intelligent development assistance may be concurrent with, but more often directly follows, relief assistance and provides appropriate resources to communities and individuals at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. The social entrepreneurship approach represents an evolution beyond traditional development assistance. As Bill Drayton of the Ashoka Foundation states, "social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."

"CE Solutions has helped me develop both professionally and as a person. As a result, I have had the opportunity to work in different professional areas and grow as a person in ways I never thought possible."

Marta Lidia
Director of Homestay & Spanish Study
CE Solutions

Going even further, the social entrepreneurship approach driving CE Solutions’ efforts is even more ambitious and attempts to create locally sustainable and globally replicable models that both “create fish” (access to appropriate healthcare, economic, educational solutions and the like) and "fishermen" (entrepreneurs) where there were none before. We also seek to identify, train and empower leaders and create sustainable infrastructures (social enterprises). As David Bornstein, author of “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas”, states, “social entrepreneurs identify resources where people only see problems. They view the villagers as the solution, not the passive beneficiary. They begin with the assumption of competence and unleash resources in the communities they're serving."

We seek to address a social ill through entrepreneurial means. We continuously seek to mobilize the competencies of our constituencies and empower them to pull both themselves and their communities step by step out of poverty. But it all starts with needs, and we have worked and must always continue to work our way backwards from this point of need in order to create solutions that offer compelling opportunities in the appropriate place, at the appropriate price, by the appropriate people and at the appropriate time.