An innovative new School has been established in Australia to give tomorrow’s entrepreneurs all the skills and support they need to turn their ideas into reality. But these students are not traditional business entrepreneurs focused purely on profit – they are social entrepreneurs, driven instead by a social mission.
The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) seeks individuals who see untapped markets as people or communities in need. Like business entrepreneurs, they are highly ambitious and creative in looking to build something out of nothing. They are able to marshal resources – sometimes from the unlikeliest places – to meet their needs. And they are not afraid to make mistakes.
Since its establishment in Sydney in early 2009, SSE Australia has attracted an influx of students drawn to the peer support, personal and professional development, and project focus that the School offers. The students are highly diverse in terms of their ages, backgrounds, gender, interests and expertise. What they all share are entrepreneurial skills and characteristics allied to a social mission or purpose.
Student enterprises include a driving school for disadvantaged young people who are unable to access supervised driving instruction, an organic community garden to teach gardening and life skills to public housing tenants in Claymore, a renewable energy project in Sri Lanka, a Sydney city farm, and an African Women’s Community Centre.
How Social Entrepreneurs Learn
In one sense the word “School” is a misnomer in that the SSE approach is non-academic and unlike traditional educational and training programs. Based on the highly successful SSE in the UK that has been operating for 10 years with over 450 graduates, the SSE approach believes that entrepreneurs learn by doing. A core element of the SSE Program is “action learning” where SSE students develop their business and life skills through applying their learning directly to the project that they are in the process of establishing or leading.
The SSE approach is also based on the belief that social change is “people powered” and facilitating new organisations to address disadvantage is a personal process. As Charlotte Young, the Chair of SSE in the UK states in a recent monograph, Sustainable Paths to Community Development:
“Community development efforts will not be sustainable unless community members ‘learn’ how to tackle their own problems and use the contributions of others to help. The best forms of insight and capability come from ‘doing’ with learning support delivered as it is needed.”
Many of the social entrepreneurs that attend SSE have personal experience of the issues they are trying to solve. They identify with the project they are establishing and take personal risks to make it happen. They can feel isolated and need personal as well as project support. This is rarely recognised in traditional training and organisational development, which focuses on imparting technical knowledge and skills. SSE helps entrepreneurial individuals to combine personal and project growth with business skills development.
The SSE Australia program is currently structured as a year-long tailored learning and development program where students attend a total of 34 days which involve: study sessions focussed on hard skills such as business planning, legal structures, and managing money; action learning sessions in small groups to facilitate peer review and problem solving; one-to-one tutorials/coaching for detailed project planning and review; mentoring; site visits to successful social enterprises; and a 3 day residential.
Stories from the Front Line
“I feel the SSE believed in me and provided me with the support I needed. The SSE understood me where other people did not.”
SSE UK Fellow
SSE student Alicia Martin first came to SSE in March 2009 with her project Dreams Within Food Buster. Alicia’s mission is to transform healthy food from being a luxury item to a necessity. Alicia developed her social enterprise to support families like her own, who struggle to afford healthy food. She also wants to help others eliminate additives and preservatives in their food which she has seen affecting her son who has a learning difficulty. Dreams Within Food Busters began with Alicia developing relationships with local wholesalers to offer affordable fresh food hampers. She has since grown the business to provide back-to-basics cooking classes, a weight loss program and monthly goal setting meetings that include simple finance and saving tips. Since her involvement in SSE, Alicia has also made a breakthrough by identifying an opportunity with Centrepay (an Agent for Centrelink) to become Australia’s first Food Agent. She is also working on an innovative approach to allowing clients to barter for her services through providing their time to assist her in packing and distributing her affordable food hampers in Western Sydney.
Michael Maxwell also joined SSE as a student of the inaugural Sydney program in March 2009. His project is based in Mt Druitt, one of the most deprived urban areas in Australia, and is called the Mt Druitt Community Enterprise Hub. The Hub has developed during Michael’s time at SSE and currently features a food market, mobile café, op-shop, and bi-weekly community markets. Michael’s vision for the Hub is to create a vibrant meeting place where community members can access affordable food and clothing as well as a series of new training, work experience and full-time employment opportunities for local residents. He is now well on the way to realising his vision with recent funding support from the Federal Government’s Job Fund.
“For some, the SSE acts as a place for fine-tuning, giving them the ability to move forward with their project in a variety of ways and to create greater impact than they would have otherwise. For others, the SSE is nothing less than the difference between existence and non-existence of their organisation and profound change within their own lives.”
New Economics Foundation
SSE UK Evaluation 1997-2007
Measuring Impact and Supporting Social Entrepreneurship in Australia
Since launching 9 months ago SSE Australia has two programs running with a total of 35 students in Sydney. A new School is set to open in Melbourne in April 2010. New Schools are also likely in the next few years in Adelaide and Brisbane as SSE seeks to license local partners to run programs in their local communities. SSE Australia is a franchise of the SSE UK School that has also licensed 9 Schools in the UK and is investigating partners in other countries including Canada and China.
In establishing and growing SSE in Australia, support has come from forward thinking philanthropic trusts and foundations, individual philanthropists and most recently from state and federal governments seeking to support grassroots efforts to community building and job creation. These supporters are at the leading edge of social investment in recognising that it is not enough to invest in community initiatives alone. For community projects and social enterprises to be successful and genuinely sustainable, they require investment in the people that are building them, through upfront and ongoing personal and professional development.
It is important to therefore recognise the difference between social enterprise and social entrepreneurship which are closely related but are not the same thing. Social enterprises are typically businesses that measure their success both by how much profit they earn and how much they benefit some part of their community. Some are committed to employing people marginalised by the mainstream job market (such as people with mental health difficulties or criminal records); others are ethical businesses trying to
benefit society in general. Social entrepreneurs were certainly behind the creation of many of these projects; however they can also be found in the not-for-profit and public sectors. Social entrepreneurs are more concerned with finding a solution to an unmet social and community need and the legal structure is simply the means through which they achieve that end. By supporting the individual social entrepreneur you are investing in their capacity to not only set up one enterprise but multiple initiatives which will have a ripple effect in multiple communities.
SSE Australia is in the process of establishing benchmarks to evaluate the efficacy and transformative effect of the SSE approach and methodology on its social entrepreneurs, their enterprises and wider communities. However, it is interesting to note the impact of the SSE program on over 450 participants in the UK. Findings of an independent report by the New Economics Foundation into the SSE program revealed that 85% of all organisations established whilst at SSE UK are still in existence; over 60% reported an increase in turnover after completing the SSE program; and for every 10 graduates 30 jobs and 69 volunteering positions are created.
Engaging in Social Entrepreneurship
SSE Australia takes an engaged philanthropy approach, where supporters can become involved in a myriad of ways including: providing expert skills; mentoring; sharing connections and networks; and funding bursaries/scholarships for students. Student bursaries can also be matched with applicant profiles and projects e.g. Indigenous women or participants working on projects that positively impact Indigenous women.
As the field of social entrepreneurship and enterprise in Australia is still in its infancy, SSE’s early funders have played a critical role in challenging and shaping the conversation around new ways that philanthropists engage with communities to drive effective and sustainable social change.
To find out more about how to get involved in social entrepreneurship and SSE Australia, please visit www.sse.org.au or email info@sse.org.au.
About the Author
Benny Callaghan is Chief Executive Officer of the new Australian School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE). Benny has a breadth of experience in the community sector and a passion and expertise in experiential and action learning. He has worked for and supported a number of social ventures in Australia, Rwanda, and the Philippines. In particular, he has had a long-standing involvement internationally with the Outward Bound organisation.
Benny has a Master of Education and is in the process of studying Futures and Strategic Foresight at Swinburne University in Melbourne. He is dedicated to enabling individuals and organisations to develop and reach their potential. Benny is passionate about the social sector and having a broad impact on the wellbeing of communities through active citizenship and social entrepreneurship.
Copyright 2009, Benny Callaghan, Australian School for Social Entrepreneurs. All rights reserved. All material in this article is the Intellectual Property of Benny Callaghan, Australian School for Social Entrepreneurs and cannot be reproduced, copied, published, quoted or disseminated without the prior permission of Benny Callaghan, Australian School for Social Entrepreneurs.
Tags: social ventures