People-powered change in Thailand (and Bethnal Green)

Posted on September 8, 2009 by sse

[A final blog post, for now, from Thor who has been working with us the past couple of months, and will be sorely missed!]

After 2 months with SSE
and a second tour abroad with the organisation, I am now leaving for a
much-longed for break in Thailand. One cannot truly make an exit without some
wise words though – and I wanted to share with you a story from the country to
which I am travelling to.

I think the most
profound educational experience I have gained from SSE is one that (ironically)
did not take place in Bethnal Green. Having travelled to a country like Thailand
before, I have become acutely aware of the fact that social entrepreneurship and
social enterprise is needed in most countries. In Thailand there is a desperate
need for improved sanitation, basic health care facilities, and most profoundly,
help for those who fall outside the system.

Recently a friend of mine made me
aware of a particularly heart-breaking example. Two years past, a small group of
students from my college in Minnesota spent a summer volunteering at the
McKaen Rehabilitation Center, an entire village where men and women who
either had leprosy or struggled with recovering from the many side effects of
the disease, could live together and exist without the fear of being rejected.
In Thailand many are ostracised from their homes when they get the disease,
leaving them with no support to recover. McKaen had developed a large area for
the village inhabitants, who supported themselves through farming and creating
various products that were sold at the local market. The roads were paved, each
patient lived comfortably in a small house, and people were allowed to be
themselves, despite appearance or disability. However, as times got rough,
McKaen began to struggle and had to move the centre (which was later turned into
a retirement home) and was forced to ask many of the recovering patients to
leave.

Where would you
go, if your family, home and medical facility all rejected you? Most of the
recovering McKaen patients (recovering most times mean learning to live with a
severe disability for the rest of your life) had nowhere to go, so they decided to stick
together and attempt to find a new home. After a local teacher donated some
land, and two former McKaen employees joined them on a volunteer basis, the
group decided to create a new home on their own. In a way they were all social
entrepreneurs, but sadly not by their own choice. When my friend returned to
help again she was shocked and moved to tears by the new conditions, only to
find out that one of the patients had taken his own life in despair. Living
together in a couple of small huts, the patients share a small plot of land and
are not able to produce anything to support themselves. Their
caretakers volunteer, but without any support or training, are unable to improve
the conditions for their severely disabled
patients.

Despite these
challenges, these men and women smiled, and they went about their day as best as
possible. When a man can help build his home while missing half of his body, he
must possess a true drive to change his own life. What him and his fellow
co-habitants need is not money, but skills-training and help to facilitate ways
of creating sustainable income. If only there was an initiative that could
empower the former residents of the McKaen Foundation.

In the last few weeks I
have often pondered if I would want to aim for a career in the third sector.
Having heard the story from Chiang Mai I am reminded more than ever that if
there ever was potential for a movement to grow on a transnational basis, it is
social enterprise. As obvious at it might seem for SSE staff, students, fellows
and other affiliates that development should focus on people and
skills-building, this is not necessarily yet a widespread notion.

In other
words, I am very happy to have worked for an organisation that gets it.

How do interns fit into the social enterprise movement?

Posted on August 6, 2009 by sse

In the welfare-state utopia that is Scandinavia, there is a saying that goes, "give the youngsters a computer before football gets to them," alluding to the ever-dominant role the sport plays in Scandinavian society. In the world of social enterprise, perhaps it is time we adopt a similar approach: "give young people a purposeful career before the corporates get to them." Step one? Adopt an intern.

As a twenty-year old college student I was lost in what to do with my life. Like many of my peers I was young, idealistic beyond belief and equipped with a hard work-ethic. However, what I lacked were hard skills, proper levels of pragmatism, and a realistic view on how to 'change the world'. Then I got the opportunity to intern for a month with a social entrepreneurship organisation, which took me in, nurtured my confidence and taught me about how social enterprise practitioners apply idealism. A year and a half later this experience has put me on track for a career that mixes purpose with professionalism, work with an outside life, and idealism with pragmatism. While there are many similar stories out there, there is still a large gap between the many young interns who stand ready to join small social enterprises, and those who actually gain the opportunity to work. Why? Here are a few hypothetical claims…

– Small social enterprises or NGOs often lack the funding to bring in an intern, even for part-time. As far as I know, outside funding alternatives specifically aimed at bringing in interns are few and far between.

– Prospective interns often have no idea where to begin their job search. Finding a small social enterprise is hard enough, finding one that can afford them and is willing to go through the process of hiring an intern is virtually impossible.

– Small social enterprises are not proactive enough in searching for interns. Many organisations want trained employees, and fail to see value of fresh perspectives and the hard work-ethic interns often bring to the table.

– Prospective interns prefer big organisations or well-known employers. In looking an internship with a name-brand business, they often do not see that with a small NGO they will receive greater responsibility, more advanced tasks, and ultimately, greater skills.

– Students are often limited for time in that they can only do internships that last for one to four months. A lot of organisations prefer longer contracts to make it a more useful learning experience for intern, but also because it gives the intern a greater opportunity to make a positive impact on the NGO.

Surely other factors play a role as well, but these stand out to me as particularly limiting.

Why is it important to defy these factors and make a conscious effort to recruit more interns? As is widely accepted, not everyone could, or should, be a social entrepreneur. However, there are plenty of young men and women who still want to partake in social enterprise, and who want to make a positive impact on their society. In this sense, second-tier organisations might be a perfect fit. NGOs often prioritize the day-to-day tasks over long-term projects that involve research, updating of databases, technological innovation – they just fall by the waste side. Ironically these features are essential in moving the sector forward, through strong networks, new initiatives, a deeper understanding of complex issues, and organisational growth.

If you work for a small social enterprise and you are looking for an intern, what do you do? SSE was lucky enough to be approached by an American college, looking to set up a sustainable internship relationship. This coming January, SSE will welcome its third intern from St. Olaf College. Looking for such a partner might be a good first step – loads of schools are filled with competent young men and women, ready to enter the sector and contribute to its growth and development. While it might be time-consuming and not directly beneficial for your organisation to adopt an intern, it might be essential for the social enterprise movement. Youth is an essential ingredient to a successful sector in the future.

Should third sector leaders be non-executive directors?

Posted on July 21, 2009 by sse

It's crazy time here at SSE….having recruited two new staff in three new regional SSEs, we're now mid-recruitment of three posts at SSE-UK here in East London. And we have been rewarded with our largest pile of CVs ever……

Whilst thinking about recruitment, I thought I'd draw attention to a different area of recruitment that has a broad relevance to the third sector. As many have pointed out, the failure of our financial institutions is also a failure of corporate governance which is, in turn, a failure of non-executive directors (NEDs). David Walker's recent report on corporate governance acknowledges this, and suggests doubling the number of days that NEDs contribute to a company per year.

This does seem an inadequate response, though. As The World of GingerbreadGirl points out:

"if you use the same people you will have the same answers, the same
approaches, and the same problems – whether or not you cut their pay,
double their pay, cut their days, or double them. If you always do what
you have always done, you will always get what you always got."

She suggests that every board should have to have one NED that has never been an NED before…in order to cut down on the cronyism, (old boy) networks and lack of variety that has affected the ability of non-execs to perform their role over the last few years. Matthew Cain follows on from this with some sensible questions that should form a basic check on whether a person can be an NED who will bring value to the corporate governance process. And points out that NEDs aren't a panacea to this problem, which is surely right.

But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed.

So how does this relate to "our" world? Well, firstly because the same applies to charitable boards: as Eleanor at NPC points out in her post (with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title of Networks aren't the answer for boards: get some fresh blood for a change),

"Trustee boards in the charity sector in the UK face remarkably similar
problems. Most (around 80%) recruit new board members from their
networks. 'Word of mouth' is great for getting people who you know and
trust, but it means that you are looking in a very small pool of people"

This is surely true. We work hard with SSE students (and Fellows) to think hard about different types of governance structure, and about the make-up of their boards (if they have them). And that challenge of being aligned to the mission, but not too close to it; of being trusted, but not uncritical; of being a good mix of skills, but also a good team… etc

Secondly, and to return to GingerbreadGirls' original point about widening the pool of talent, surely there are people from the charity and social enterprise sectors who would add credibility, acuity, insight and experience to some corporate boards? This is something we've been looking at on the Social Enterprise Ambassadors programme and was called for at an event the other evening by leading charity lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who was reported as saying:

"that at least one non-executive director of all quoted
companies should have extensive experience of the social/voluntary
sector to add a new perspective to board discussions"

Again, getting leading charity or social enterprise directors as non-exec directors is by no means a panacea, but it would surely bring a fresh pair of (credible) eyes to the table, combined with experience of running a significant organisation. And would also foster better understanding in both sectors about the differing demands and natures of each.

[Writing this post as part of Bloggers' Circle, an initiative to share posts cross-blog and get interesting posts more widely-read.]

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