The last days have been quite busy here at SSE. The Ambassadors came to Bethnal Green yesterday for the second gathering of the group since the programme kicked off this fall. SSE hosted the session and Alastair did a bit about how people can learn from the Ambassadors’ journeys, and how peer learning can be embedded in the programme. Later in the day Nick introduced the nuts and bolts about blogging. From the view of the audience, it seemed that the group enjoyed learning about our philosophy and it really hit base with some. And for those of you who have seen Ali and Nick in action before, you know they can be quite enjoyable to learn from!       

?WhatIf! was also present and James Baderman adeptly handled the co-creation bit, while nef introduced the evaluation part of the day. The day seems to have sat well with the whole group and they all seemed to leave in high spirits and positive about the coming months! This day was sort of the apex of my internship, as today is my final day with SSE.

After a month here in the Young Foundation complex, I think both SSE and I part ways on a positive note. Now I will go back to Minnesota and St. Olaf College to further research how to embed social entrepreneurship into an academic institution, without losing the value of "learning by doing". It will be interesting to see how different the US sector is from the UK, but I look forward to these new challenges that surely will present themselves in this process. What I first and foremost will take from SSE is the importance of the grassroots social entrepreneurs – their efforts slowly push society on a grander scale towards progress. These people may not always scale up or be famous or get honoured by awards, but they are still real and they still cause real change. How this matches with the strong individualistic culture in the US will be interesting to find out, but it’s a crucial question, I think. 

For now, adios.