Social Enterprise and Suicide Prevention

Re-published with permission from original author: Jess Stohlmann

Since I started my job, I have found myself spending a lot of time explaining what I do to other people. I can never decide whether to say I teach suicide prevention classes or that I teach social enterprise first.
If I start with suicide prevention, the response is generally something like this: “Oh my gosh, your job must be so hard!” Then I am left trying to decide how much explanation I feel like giving about my work. If I decide to be brief, I will say something like this:

“Actually, I love my job! It is really uplifting and inspiring. I am in the PREvention field. Most of the time when we talk about suicide, we talk about INTERvention or POSTvention. Postvention is providing support to the bereaved and survivors of suicide. The best example of intervention would be hotline types of services. They are the people who help protect someone who is suicidal while they are actually feeling suicidal, not really before. I do the WAY before work. My work is focused on empowering young people to be resilient and helping them sustain a passion for life.”

Yes – that is the short version. I think that the “job-must-be-so-hard” response is really indicative of a big problem with the way people view suicide in the States, and particularly in Colorado (sometime I will get into how rugged individualism works against communities out here, but not today). The problem is that we view suicide itself as a problem, and usually a problem that is sort of inexplicable and unstoppable. Usually, suicide is seen by a suicidal person as a solution to set of other problems that seem insoluble. It makes sense that we, as a community, want to feel this way. We almost never talk about suicide except in the wake of tragedy, and when a tragedy has occurred we want to do everything we can to make sure that the bereaved people do not feel responsible for the death of a loved one. But when it comes down to it, most of the time suicide is preventable, and we should be treating it like any other public health issue. In my ideal world, we would treat suicide the same way we treat something like breast cancer. It would be something that people wouldn’t be scared to talk about – they would even wear gear and go for runs to support research to help prevent and treat it. Families who had lost someone to suicide wouldn’t feel responsible for the death of a loved one, even if there were signs and symptoms that they could have recognized if they knew what they were. Mental health screenings would be as common and “normal” as breast exams. I believe suicide is not only a public health issue, but a social justice issue – all people should be able to access the help they need to survive; no one should be dying from a treatable, preventable problem.

If I start with social enterprise, people generally give me a blank stare and try to move on. Because I believe that social enterprise is going to save the world, I feel the need to subject everyone that doesn’t know about it to one of my “why-social-enterprise-is-so-great” rants. They go something like this:

Social enterprise is the place where for profit practices meet nonprofit principles. They find a way to make money while solving social problems. You have probably heard of the Women’s Bean Project (http://www.womensbeanproject.com/) – that is a great example. They break the cycle of poverty by teaching women employment skills. While they are teaching those skills, they are also making a product that they sell. So they are making money and making a difference. Our government doesn’t provide all the services that people need, that is why we have nonprofits. The issue is that nonprofits have a model where money comes in from donors and resources go out to clients; so the services to the clients depend on money being given by others. Social enterprises sort of mix that all up and engage the “clients” in the work of the business. Clients are participants in their own liberation. If you are interested in learning more, you should check out this book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, by David Bornstein (http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Sociology/SocialMovementSocialChange/?ci=9780195396331&view=usa). Anyway, what I do is teach young people how to start social enterprises that find a root cause of suicide in their communities, and create a product or service they can sell to work to solve that problem. They submit a business plan, we seed fund their businesses, then they make their product and start selling!

So that begins to explain what I do. Every day, I see young people changing themselves and changing the world. Every day, I see youth becoming more resilient, building a passion for life, and learning the skills they will need to run enterprises that I truly believe will save us. And they won’t just save us from suicide; they will save us from every other ailment, from hunger to gender violence, because they will know what it means to be a force for good. They will know that good businesses revolutionize business and change the world for the better, and they will lead us into a brighter future than we ever could have imagined. I am in the business of fostering hope, and they are in the business of making it happen.