During Global Entrepreneurship Week, at Pickwell Manor in North Devon, a group of students on the CMS Pioneer Leadership Course
will learn how to apply models of social enterprise to ideas that seek
to enhance the lives of people and communities. The five-day residential
is hosted by the Church Mission Society and students are encouraged to
come along with a business idea to work on during the week. They will
attend sessions on formulating a mission statement, devising a business
plan, accessing different sources of funding and evaluating success. In
addition, they will hear stories of social enterprises that are already
thriving and get the opportunity to quiz their owners to discover the
secrets of their success.
One example of good practice to be shared is Global SeeSaw,
a company that sells wholesale, online and through their shop goods
made by women who have been exploited through global trafficking. Run as
a social enterprise, all profits are reinvested into the business to
create more jobs. This gives vulnerable women, who are
disproportionately affected by poverty, greater freedom.
Mark Wakeling, the entrepreneur behind Global SeeSaw, explains:
“We’re committed to finding quality products that not only impress with
their contemporary design, but also use recycled materials in their
manufacture. While many fair trade companies pay just wages and don’t
use child labour, we go a step further and ensure that all our
manufacturing partners also reinvest their profits. We measure success
in human lives changed, rather than wealth generated.”
Course leader, Jonny Baker, says of this unique learning opportunity:
“To be sustainable, we must embrace the practices of social enterprise
and seek to make a difference, while generating finances where
appropriate. For too long business principles have been seen as
incompatible with social action, but if we are to be relevant and
innovative in the longer term, creative ways of demonstrating our faith
need to be self-supporting as well as transformative. We have created
this module to begin to address this and we’re encouraging our students
to pursue activities that will not need to be wholly dependent on
charitable funding.”
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