Wrestling with the Present to Re-Imagine the Future of Social Entrepreneurship in Social Work: A South African Context

Abstract

South Africa faces many problems that require the attention of social workers. It wrestles with youth unemployment, and social work graduates are not immune to this plight. Despite the profession’s mandate of promoting social change, empowerment and liberation, the social work curriculum fails to prepare graduates for entrepreneurial opportunities. Moreover, there is a dearth of research on how the current curriculum transforms and empowers graduates to explore the untapped space of social entrepreneurship in curbing unemployment. This article utilises the Focused Mapping Review and Synthesis method to explore how unemployed social work graduates can re-imagine the future through social entrepreneurship. The review confirms that little is known on how social work graduates could apply entrepreneurship to reduce unemployment. The authors argue that the current social work curriculum must incorporate social entrepreneurship as a model for graduates to respond to the country’s unemployment crisis. This is significant since institutions of higher learning strive for transformation in developing innovative, long-term solutions to persistent social problems.