Social enterprise - building the Big Society

http://www.ifb.org.uk/
I witnessed social entrepreneurship in action last week when the IFB participated in a Business in the Community event visiting charities and social enterprises in London’s East End. The event showed how business can bring benefit to their own organisations, as well as wider society, by getting involved in these activities.

Social entrepreneurs are people who use their entrepreneurial can-do approach and creative mind to set up organisations that deliver social or environmental benefits and help change lives and society for the better. And among the enterprises I saw in the Seeing is Believing programme was Shepresa that offers support to Albanian’s who have fled violence or persecution to seek asylum in our country. There was also Bikeworks, in Tower Hamlets, which provides a range of cycling related services, including vocational training for people from homeless and other challenging backgrounds.

The leaders of the organisations are alumni of the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) in Bethnall Green, an organisation at the forefront of this sector in terms of education. We saw first-hand how businesses can engage in the work that SSE does developing leadership and other business skills in budding social entrepreneurs.

This is all about putting, what David Cameron called, the Big Society into action - the Government has made a specific commitment to encourage social enterprises. There is a huge role for business to play, working with social enterprise to bring benefits back to our organisations through greater employee satisfaction and learning as well as strengthening social capital generally.

Family businesses can get involved in supporting social enterprise in a number of ways including investing in it and including it in the firm’s supply chain. There are also ways of involving employees, including offering opportunities for secondments, or providing mentoring to social entrepreneurs, as well as pro bono advice and expertise.