Three Peruvian women social entrepreneurs discuss the misconceptions about poverty that they have faced and how understanding them has shaped the success of their initiatives: A dancing school for street kids, affordable sanitation for the urban poor, and a coding school for underprivileged women. Using their own stories and examples, Vania, Mariana and Isabel will discuss specific lessons from their social enterprises in Latin America, such as how the so-called “bottom of the pyramid” is not an untapped market but an untapped pool of human capital and commitment; the weight of short term vs long term thinking in addressing poverty; and how success in social entrepreneurship doesn’t necessarily imply scaling up quickly; among others.