Who are social inventors, where are the Red Adairs who respond to human needs?
In my lifetime I think of Frank Laubach, the missionary working amongst the Moro people in the Philippines who devised the 'Each One Teach One' approach as a simple way by which the barely literate might help others to learn to read.
I think of Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, perceiving how the telephone could be a lifeline for those on the brink of suicide.
I salute those who pioneered the kibbutz movement as a new approach to family living - and those in Toronto today who have made some involvement in community service a pre-condition for Barmitzvah, just as elsewhere in North America the Mormons require their young people to engage in service to others as part of the process of being accepted as adults.
I honour Cecily Saunders and others in the Hospice movement who have shown how to bring dignity to the dying and relief from suffering.
I pay tribute to Lisa and Curtis Sliwa who have mobilised the Guardian Angels, initially among young Hispanics in New York, to combat mugging on the subway at night - and who are now reaching out to contend with prostitution and drug addiction.
I greet erstwhile colleagues in CSV who convinced the Home Office of the capacity of Borstal boys, of young prisoners and even children-in-care to help others (and themselves) as volunteers - demonstrating that you do not have to be good to do good.
I congratulate those who have discovered that the appointment of carefully chosen equivalents of a concierge to apartment blocks can reduce vandalism and promote neighbourliness.
I express gratitude to the nurses in one hospital who will not let patients be wheeled away to the operating theatre until they have grasped what it is intended shall happen to them - a compassionate insistence on the patient's right to know.
I think of Molly Barrett at Walkden School getting her pupils to devise an alarm clock for the deaf; Professor Thring at Queen Mary College challenging engineering students to design a wheelchair capable of climbing stairs; and Sinclair Goodlad at Imperial College inspiring internationally able students to tutor slow-learning pupils of maths in Pimlico and Stockwell - all demonstrating what can be achieved through the humane application of knowledge, in a partnership of service and learning.
These are some of the 'models' which come to my mind. But there are other yardsticks by which we can value the role of social inventors. The Institute believes that in most of us there lies a capacity for social invention. This can be nurtured by discovering what others are creating, by brainstorming, by exercising the imagination and opening the mind's eye, as Margaret Chisman has shown us how to do.
Alec Dickson, 19 Blenheim Road, London W4 IVB (tel 081 994 7437). 'Exercising the Imagination' and 'Opening the Mind's Eye' are both booklets by Margaret Chisman, available from the Institute for Social Inventions, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 081 208 2853; fax 081 452 6434).