Social cleavages have always been the main issue damaging the social harmony of civilized nations. At the present, it is one of the fastest-growing pains globally. People all over the world are more divided with the help of social media and taking care of this pain has become a more urgent priority. To ease it people must be willing to understand and unjudge each other. Human libraries aim to help this process.
Normally we borrow digital or printed books from the libraries. Human libraries are a new social entrepreneurship experience. It was founded by Ronni Abergel of the Human Libarary in Denmark about 2 decades ago and has been growing internationally ever since.
Human libraries allow us to borrow "people" instead of books. Here the main goal is to bridge our divisions by getting people with different social values and ethnicities to discuss their differences and "unjudge" each other. In this nonprofit platform every "human book" represents a group that is prejudiced because of their lifestyles. The human library encourages the readers not to "judge" the book because of its cover.
The Human Library is now active in more than 80 countries and has more than 1,000 human books in circulation in more than 50 languages.
Several commercial companies are partnering with and supporting the human libraries because they employ people of different races and socio-economic backgrounds. Those employees, after a human library activity, are keener to listen and try to ignore their prejudices against each other. This, in return, helps increase productivity, morale and improves corporate culture.
This is an excellent example of "social entrepreneurship" which is expanding globally and becoming a self-supported activity.