The SSE Fellowship is an increasingly valuable resource and an increasingly powerful and inspirational network of social entrepreneurs and community activists. So graduating from the SSE programme (pdf) and becoming a Fellow is a cause for great celebration, and, often, a moving day for all those involved.

I was at the East Midlands SSE yesterday, as an expert witness on evaluation (with due thanks to NEF, whose presentation and materials I largely used….), and they have a dozen or so students who will be entering the Fellowship on the 21st July. Which is just one day after….

…the Fellowship ceremony for one of the current London programmes, the Ready Steady Grow 2005-6 cohort. Which will be at the Amnesty UK building in Old Street on July 20th. Which will swell the ranks further, and add to the array of successful organisations and, just as importantly, skilled and confident people who the SSE have helped achieve their goals.

Fellowship has been on my mind recently, as we conduct our longitudinal evaluation work, and have been chatting to several Fellows from Fife, London and elsewhere, all the way back to 1998. I’ve also been trying to track Fellows’ projects using our Del.icio.us bookmarks; see Fellowship for the websites of some of their projects (NB – this doesn’t even scratch the surface yet).

As research continues to show the need for peer-led support and of networks to entrepreneurs, and SSE sees year-on-year the importance of the cohort in reducing isolation and providing confidence, as well as providing new opportunities for collaborative working and trading, the importance and value of the Fellowship will only continue to grow.replicas de relogios

Rumours that our new offices will be based in two towers are wide of the mark, though….