The British Council and Social Enterprise

The British Council is the UK’s cultural relations organisation. It creates international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries, and builds trust between them through programmes that foster opportunity, trust, prosperity and security. By providing social entrepreneurs with skills training and professional mentoring, along with access to UK expertise, peer networks and funding opportunities, we improve their ability to raise funds and grow their enterprises.

Social enterprise is defined in many ways but can be summarised as a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community. There are many different models ranging from charities to co-operatives and community interest groups in support of social enterprises. Such organisations occupy the space between public and private sectors and are typically grouped as the ‘third sector’.

Although social enterprises are often non-profits, this need not be incompatible with makin a profit. Social enterprises are for ‘more-than-profit,’ using blended value business models that combine a revenue-generating business with a social-value-generating structure or component. Increasingly too, social enterprises complement or replace state delivered services which are no longer affordable by the state or incumbent provider.

Our Shared Future aims to share UK expertise with countries where social enterprise is a growing paradigm. The UK is seen as a world leader in social enterprise, where 55,000 social enterprises employ 475,000 people, with a total turnover of £27 billion and estimated 1% contribution to GDP. The value however goes beyond GDP – and as Our Shared Future explores, creates work that gives a sense of fulfillment and community engagement to engender a wider sense of social wellbeing.

Our Shared Future and skills for social enterprise

Social enterprise delivers sustainable economic growth whilst fostering social change and innovation. The British Council’s Our Shared Future project supports a culture of social entrepreneurship in the Euro-Mediterranean region, providing social entrepreneurs with business skills and a network for peer support. In particular. Our Shared Future helps social enterprises to play a meaningful and transformational role in their communities at a time when acute youth joblessness in the region demands innovative solutions.

Social entrepreneurs however need the business skills and personal networks to be able to sustain themselves and scale up their impact. Our Shared Europe has therefore gathered a group of budding entrepreneurs to benefit from the ‘Start a Business’ online course, offered by the project partner, Cisco Enterprise Institute. At the project’s workshop in Malta, the entrepreneurs come together with other experts for further training, mentoring, inspiration, finalisation of business plans, and to consolidate a rich peer to peer network.

Follow the Our Shared Future seminar via our live webcast!

The keynote speeches will be streamed live:

28 February: 9.30 – 10.15 (CET)
Social Enterprise in Europe: Mediterranean Context, EU Policy Perspective (Filippo Addarii, Executive Director, EUCLID)

Social Enterprise in Europe Mediterranean Context: North Africa perspective (Ehaab Abdou, Ashoka Fellow)

Social Enterprise: Replacing State Services? (Francesco Grillo, Vision, UK).

1 March: 09.15 -10.45 (CET)
Social Impact Investment: Trends, Concepts and Best Practice, (Unltd, Madeleine Gabriel)

How to measure  and demonstrate your impact;  SROI , Auditing …and a surprise gift; (Helen Vines, VINESWORKS)

To watch the webcast, simply visit http://www.di-ve.com/pages/british-council

Filippo Addarii, Executive Director, Euclid Network. Euclid Network is a growing community of civil society professionals who want to connect across borders for a stronger, more innovative and more sustainable European civil society. http://www.euclid.eu/

Ehaab Abdou, leader of MENA Development Marketplace program at WBI. The Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grant program that identifies and funds innovative, early stage development projects that are scalable and/or replicable, while also having high potential for development impact. http://wbi.worldbank.org/developmentmarketplace/

Francesco Grillo, Founder of Vision UK. Vision is a think tank dedicated to strategic thinking on the transformations triggered by technologies and globalisation. http://www.visionwebsite.eu

Madeleine Gabriel, Head of Impact, Research and Evaluation at UnLtd.  UnLtd is the leading provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK and offers the largest such network in the world. UnLtd resources hundreds of individuals each year through its core Awards programme. http://unltd.org.uk/

Helen Vines, VINESWORKS. VINESWORKS provides business advice, impact measurement, training and facilitation services to social enterprises and those working in the social economy. http://www.vinesworks.co.uk/

Introducing the Entrepreneurs of Our Shared Future, 2013:

1.Boudouma Billel Abdelbasset, Algeria
2.Amina Abodoma, Egypt
3.Theodore Anagnostopoulos, Greece
4.Osama Benkhaial, Libya
5.Mark Causon, Malta
7.Aleksey Egorov, Russia
8.Olwyn Elda Roche, Ireland
9.Tia Kansara, UK
10.Elizaveta Kiseleva, Spain
11.Arsen Lukpanov, Kazakhstan
12.Edrissi Mouna, Morocco
13.Tiago Matos, Portugal
14.Seif Allah Mejri, Tunisia
15.Maria Sferrazza, Italy
16.Barbara Wojtkowska Guicherit, Poland
17.Konstantina Zoehrer, Greece