Watch out world because I now have a driving license. Yep, in a frankly remarkable turn of events I this week managed to drive for 40 minutes without causing a serious incident and convinced the DVLA that I should be allowed on the road unsupervised. It’s all slightly terrifying; I did my first solo drive the other night and ended up botching a parallel park and basically leaving the car in the middle of the road.
Still, it does open up possibilities for a Have I Got Social Enterprise News For You roadshow. Just make sure that there a wide parking bays and I don’t need to get there via a motorway…
Enjoy the news
For Queen and country
Some fantastic news this week for SSE Fellow Annmarie Lewis, who has been awarded an OBE in the Birthday Honours List for services to ‘Young People in Youth Justice, Education and Entrepreneurship’. Annmarie is the founder of Rainmakers Worldwide, providing business support and personal development to young people from diverse and challenging backgrounds, primarily to create their own sustainable businesses.
Huge congratulations from everyone at SSE!
To your health
A reminder for health and wellbeing projects in either Lambeth or Southwark; we’re currently accepting applications to The Health and Wellbeing Trade Up Programme. We’re looking to support projects that either tackle childhood obesity or help to slow the replica rolex progression from one long-term health condition to many, in working-age adults. (Our website gives you loads of example projects.)
On offer is a free learning programme, a grant of up to £10,000 and a support network of peers…
Ker-ching
You’ve got until Sunday to apply to the Co-op’s Local Community Fund, which supports community projects near to Co-op shops and funeral homes (Co-op members choose the project that they want to support and then 1% of their spending goes to the project). Projects need to be working in one of three areas: helping a local community come together to save, build, fix or improve indoor or outdoor local spaces / supporting the mental or physical health of a community through wellbeing activities / helping people reach their full potential by developing their skills.
Transformers
Next week is Digital Leaders Week, which according to the organisers is ‘the most inspirational week in the Digital Transformation calendar’. And who am I to argue with that? The most exciting thing in my calendar next week is a meeting with a bloke who might be ripping some shelves out in our kitchen. Anyhow, there are a whole load of events both online and offline around the country. I haven’t clicked on all of them but it looks like they might all be free.
Story time
Also getting in on what I’m confidently predicting will be an ‘internet revolution’ are our friends at Good Finance, who are hosting a ‘storytelling for raising investment’ webinar on 19th June at 11am. The webinar will look at how to tell the perfect impact story to win over your audience when fundraising or raising investment. Which sounds useful.
The Thick of It
Your eyes are not deceiving you. This may seem impossible to believe, but a political party has done something that isn’t related to either Brexit or a leadership contest. Somewhere in the dusty chambers of the House of Commons the Labour Party have been putting together their civil society strategy. It’s worth taking a look, although considering the current machinations in Westminster who knows if it will ever come close to being enacted…
In it to win it
A trio of awards are currently looking for entrants – someone has to win them, why can’t it be you?
Social Enterprise UK have fourteen categories to which you can apply, and as mentioned last week every shortlisted entrant in four of them (UK social enterprise of the year, international impact, women in social enterprise and education, training and jobs) will be offered a £1000 bursary towards attending the 2019 Social Enterprise World Forum in Ethiopia. Nominations close on 7th July.
Social Enterprise Scotland’s awards are also open until 7th July and in a strong demonstration of post Bannockburn harmony the winners of five of the six categories will win at ticket to Social Enterprise UK’s awards and be automatically shortlisted in them. Which I think means that you could win Scottish Social Enterprise of the Year, pick up a ticket for SEUK’s awards and qualify for a bursary to Addis Ababa and then win UK Social Enterprise of the Year. Probably worth entering.
Finally, the Blue Patch Sustainable Business Awards are open to organisations from across the UK. There are a couple of categories that could be of interest, including the Social Good Award, the Global Impact Award and the Sustainable Innovation Award. The awards are open until 24th July.
This is how you do marketing
We’ve got a couple of upcoming workshops at SSE London and availability on both. Working with Corporates next Thursday will tell you all about working with corporates, while Finding New Customers and Making More Sales on 28th June will explain how you find new customers and making more sales.
Pour les femmes
French organisation Empow’Her are currently running a study on women in social entrepreneurship in Europe and they need your help to better understand what difficulties you have met and what are your support needs. If you are a woman social entrepreneur interested in joining a European community of women changemakers then they’d love it if you could take a few minutes to answer this survey.
Food for the soul
SSE Fellow Helen James is looking for wellbeing focused social enterprises to join as speakers / presenters to join an online summit later in the year. The event aims to gather a like-minded group with lived experience of diet-culture and body stigma. Helen’s organisation Nutriri helps people accept, like and love their bodies, quit disordered eating and make nurturing self care choices.
Find out more about the online summit here
Revolting
Finally, if you’re looking for something to read over lunch I enjoyed ‘How to take over your town: the inside story of a local revolution‘ by John Harris on the Guardian’s website this week. The tl;dr version is that local party politics is failing and community groups are stepping in to fill the void. It’s a v good piece.
