// Social Entrepreneurship: “Air Miles for Social Change”
Andreas Souvaliotis, one of Canada’s most successful social entrepreneurs was the founder and CEO of the world’s first national incentive program for environmentally responsible and healthy lifestyles. Andreas lived a remarkable journey and is incredibly passionate about changing the world – without sacrifice! In anticipation of his keynote address at this year’s Corporate and Community Social Responsibility Conference, we attempt to summarize some of his key thoughts.
Souvaliotis says that we cannot solve the world’s severe social challenges by using the same thinking that helped create them. We need to change the language of communication if we want to engage the masses. People would respond very differently to an existential crisis than they do today to an “environmental” issue. To build truly scalable solutions, we must harness humans’ natural instinct for profit and growth instead of fighting it.
Souvaliotis is the founder of AIRMILES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE. He used his knowledge about how human beings respond to incentives and points out that most of us are remarkable chasers of loyalty points – especially in Canada. With the help of a sharp and uniquely aggressive investor, Souvaliotis started building the world’s first eco-points program based on the simple idea of giving people extra points when they do the right thing. The next step was to make the points redeemable for the right stuff like transit passes, bikes, gym memberships and music downloads. So instead of redeeming for flights around the world that create more environmental pollution, Souvaliotis made sure that people were redeeming points for rewards that were not harming the environment and things that were good for your health.
