The School for Social Entrepreneurs

SavvyChavvy

On a list of things I thought I'd never link to, a site with the name SavvyChavvy would probably feature. But it's not a micktaking site or a spoof online joke: it's a serious initiative to connect gypsy and traveller communities in the UK who are, by their very nature, often particularly isolated from each other. It allows young travellers in particular to connect to their peers, which is often as much about connecting East European Romany to their UK counterparts.

Does this section the community off in itself? Well, possibly, but providing them with a safe space to connect and communicate away from the excesses of Facebook groups and comments (there have already been 'spoof' profiles set up within the site, prompting new culturally-specific questions) seems like a sensible thing to do, especially when coupled with on-the-ground internet training. You can only join the community if you're part of the traveller community at SavvyChavvy.com (it's a social network built with Ning) but you can see some accompanying video clips here, and how the local South East TV news reported it.

Hopefully it might also go some way to reclaiming, or repositioning, the word 'chav', given that it is largely thought to come from the Romany word 'chavi' for a young person.

Congratulations to Jake Bowers and SSE Fellow Nathalie McDermott on a great initiative.

Saving the world one species at a time

I'm renowned at SSE as not being a great animal lover (due to being allergic to most of them), but an e-mail from a friend prompted me to look at a new website about species which are "evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered" (EDGE). It's called Edge Of Existence, and is a project of the Zoological Society of London, aiming to conserve these species by implementing the necessary research and conservation actions.

In a stroke of fundraising genius, you can choose to support in a variety of ways...but most will surely choose to support specific actions to help a particular species. My donation went to the uber-cute Slender Loris.

It's a fantastic site, albeit in the early stages, and an extraordinarily effective way of getting important research funded. Not only in the linking to specific animals, but also detailing exactly where this goes and why it is important. Obvious fundraising steps, but executed superbly, and with good and appropriate use of new technology to both invite questions and promote interaction and engagement.

[thanks to Fev for the link]

Military takes lessons from disruptive businesses

Great headline for an article in USA Today: "Can small businesses help win the war?". Apparently the US military have taken note of the success of businesses such as Craiglist, YouTube, and the like, and are studying how traditional businesses are responding. Why? Because Al-Qaeda is a disruptive organisation based on decentralised leadership. See the following:

"How large, traditional companies fare in this fight may prove invaluable in developing a strategy against al-Qaeda. That's why the military is going to school. A book making the rounds at the Pentagon is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. It was written for a business audience, but military strategists are saying, "This is the best thing I've read that applies to counterterrorism," says Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a Defense Department director in international affairs.

The premise of The Starfish and the Spider is that centralized organizations are like spiders and can be destroyed with an attack to the head. Decentralized organizations transfer decision-making to leaders in the field. They are like starfish. No single blow will kill them, and parts that are destroyed will grow back."

The three-option solution to dealing with a decentralised opponent? Change the ideology that fuels them (aka hearts and minds), centralise them (governments easier to deal with than terrorists; Google takes YouTube), or decentralise yourself. I'm not quite sure how far you can take this analogy (a decentralised  military force is a pretty scary prospect), but shows the impact on our culture and ways of thinking that new organisations/ways of doing things are having. And I might be getting hold of that book too....In fact, while we're at it, here's Amazon's list of the top 10 business books from 2006 (for some reason, Amazon.co.uk only has a list of 6, of which only 2 overlap; go figure)

Afruca and child trafficking

Debbie Ariyo, the amazing social entrepreneur who founded and runs Afruca (Africans Unite Against Child Abuse), has sent us a link to their campaigning video on YouTube. We played the video at the recent Fellowship ceremony in London, at which Debbie's cohort of students completed their programme.

It's a powerful video that reminds us how the most vulnerable can be treated as a commodity; a message that carries particular weight at this time of year. Long may Afruca's very necessary work continue.

Enterprise Week and Social Enterprise Day

I've been tracking a few associated pieces about Enterprise Week (and Thursday, Social Enterprise Day). Today is of course, Women's Enterprise Day (because the acronym is WED?)....anyway, here are some related bits of news:

- Jonathan Bland of SEC in the Society Guardian today saying what you'd expect, really: a rolling out of the 55,000 numbers and a rallying call on procurement

- A couple of slightly more critical responses from the Adam Smith Institute and the Daily Telegraph, the latter of which looks at whether government legislation has helped foster an entrepreneurial culture in the UK...and questions whether event days actually work

- ...well, judging by the FT's coverage, they don't do any harm, as they have a series of interviews running all week, including some top tips for entrepreneurs (from John Caudwell and Sir Tom Hunter, amongst others)...although the FT is the official media partner....

- Gordon Brown applauds a renaissance of entrepreneurship and enterprise at the start of the week

- Check out the Trailblazers supplement as part of the campaign (via Social Enterprise Magazine)

- From a personal point of view there seems to be a little less going on this year (maybe, because there was SO much going on last year: awards, publication launches etc....), although there is a shindig at no.11 tomorrow (at which SSE will be appearing, I believe....), the launching of the social enterprise plan, which will be pored over by us all, and the launch of a new venture from SSE Fellow James Greenshields' Media for Development: Inside Job Productions

What's most impressive about the day and the week are the organisations it brings together in one co-ordinated campaign, and that enterprise is promoted by all of those as a means to job creation, wealth creation and improving people's lives in the round. If some greater focus is given to these issues as a result, then it can't be viewed a failure: promotion and marketing is a key part to any campaign's success....

Social Innovation blogs and links

I've just returned from Beijing, at a Social Innovation conference, which was tremendously interesting....and of which a more focused post soon. But, in the meantime, here's a list of blogs and sites that I follow in the wider world of social innovation:

- First up, the mighty WorldChanging, who are also connected to TED (and the TEDBlog; see TedTalk for podcasts)

- Social Innovation Conversations, led by Tim Zak and others...for the podcasters amongst you

- Doors of Perception for a design-centred approach (see their take on the Beijing conference here)

- Xigi.net which is newer but has interesting stuff around social markets and investments; Acumen Fund is a funder of social entrepreneurs with a decent blog...

- Springwise is an offshoot of Trendwatching, giving a 'daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas'...

- Audeamus, this blog (!), the 4 Non Profits PACE blog, and (the active bits of) SocialEdge pretty much cover social entrepreneurship

- David Wilcox's Designing for Civil Society is interesting on partnership, governance, networking and knowledge...and Clay Shirky is great on the interface of society and technology

- Of the (UK) think-tanks, Demos' Greenhouse is most active and most wide-ranging

- There are also RSS feeds of (crazy, humorous, and sometime socially-oriented) new ideas from the Global Ideas Bank, Idea A Day and HalfBakery

I'll add to this soon: all suggestions welcome...

UPDATE: (more sites than blogs, now)

- John Thackara adds design-related innovation links to the pot, of which I'll pick out particularly...
Architecture for Humanity, the Next Design Institute and GeekCorps as well as the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which I should have mentioned before

- Site-wise, social entrepreneurs are also well-represented on the new spangly Ashoka site, as well as Echoing Green, Schwab and others.

- Headshift is good for social software stuff

- Uffe from Kaos Pilots (who deserve a link here as well, of course!) sends through Emerging Futures which is a new one to me

- Also, ideas and technology-wise, we can throw ShouldExist and Lazy Web (for tech ideas) into the mix, as well as MySociety's portfolio, including Pledgebank, WriteToThem and TheyWorkForYou
 

Bangladesh, North Wales, London and Beijing

A few things to report in on this weekend; sorry to group such disparate things together....

- the first, of course, is Muhammad Yunus winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microcredit; he's had many plaudits (rightly: read Audeamus and Social ROI blogs, for example) which I don't need to add to. Worth reading some articles about his work on the Global Ideas Bank, though; search for 'Grameen'

- from Bangladesh to Wales...I spoke at a BLOC seminar in Betws-y-Coed the other evening, along with Francis Irving of the mighty MySociety, and Alan Harris of KnowNet. Will blog about this more soon (particularly the most amazing taxi drive ever...), but take a look at the BLOC site which is doing interesting things around promoting creativity, technology and enterprise across Wales.

- and across, more predictably, to London, for the launch of the Enterprise for All Coalition's launch of its report "Progressing the agenda"; it's an excellent piece of work, and very much accord with SSE's current thinking, so I will post up when it's available for download. In the meantime, you can read the Times' take on the report within this article

- and, finally, the SSE blog is off to Beijing to a Social Innovation conference; internet access allowing, I'll be blogging from there over the next few days....

Is Charles Clarke a social entrepreneur?

Diving headfirst, if a little tardily, into the machinations of the Labour leadership, it was interesting to note that Charles Clarke, in between sideswipes, had said that the difference between Blairites and Brownites was the difference between 'social entrepreneurs' and 'Fabians'. According to Demos, this is his way of saying that "The [Brownites] still believe the central state is the best way of securing equity and improving lives. The [Blairites] think that local freedom and engagement are the better route."

As well as raising the question of whether Tony Blair is a social entrepreneur, this also seems a bit too simplistic or binary. Gordon Brown's proclamations + support for various organisations (including ourselves) doesn't back up this view of him as an old-fashioned centrist. There is also an argument (which Demos make) that New Labour is more interested in new ways of delivering services, rather than full-on devolution/"true" social entrepreneurship.

More interestingly, it does raise the question of whether a government minister can ever be a social entrepreneur. Social entrepreneurs do cut across sectors, so they can work in the public sector. Politicians do challenge and change the status quo at times (particularly when newly in power) but do they take risks or have enough ownership of initiatives to warrant the name? Do they have the personal attachment to the mission? Who knows, but it's an interesting development in the use of the term, whether you agree with it or not.

For a more 'traditional' vision (or version) of a social entrepreneur, you can download Ashoka-famed Bill Drayton's "Everyone a Changemaker: the ultimate vision of social entrepreneurship" here.

Social enterprise makes the honours list

Congratulations from all at SSE to Adele Blakebrough, Chief Executive of Community Action Network, on being awarded an MBE, no less, in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Well-deserved recognition for her personal role in promoting and supporting social enterprise. CAN continues to expand its dizzying array of activities, particularly focusing on the CAN Mezzanine Co-Location model, which has proved such a success at London Bridge.

In other Queen/award-related news, we are similarly delighted that Shpresa, the organisation of SSE Fellow and Trustee Luljeta Nuzi, has been awarded the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2006; for "enabling the Albanian speaking   community in UK to settle and fully participate in society".
Read an account of Luljeta's amazing personal journey on the SSE website.

Immigration and (social) entrepreneurship

A Nation Built on Immigrant Genes is an article by John Gartner in the Washington Post which argues that (in the case of the US, and beyond)  immigrants are far more than simply a source of cheap, unskilled labour. Rather, they are natural entrepreneurs and, as Gartner puts it, "the original venture capitalists, risking their human capital -- their lives -- on a dangerous and arduous voyage into the unknown."

He goes on to discuss how immigrants are, as a result of this entrepreneurial spirit, self-employed at a higher rate than native-born people (though the difficulty of breaking into traditional job markets must also play a part here?). And, most interestingly perhaps, says that "the rate of entrepreneurial activity in a nation is correlated with the number of immigrants it absorbs". He then extrapolates from that (via new business creation as a predictor of GDP) to the mighty claim that "Immigrants equal national wealth".

It served as a reminder to me of conversations we have had at SSE about the number of refugees/immigrants who have the drive and initiative to set up social enterprises against significant odds. People like Luljeta Nuzi and Rahma Abdalla, whose stories (and journeys) demonstrate their entrepreneurial characteristics (risk-taking, courage, prone to action) from the start, and how these entrepreneurial traits can then be blended effectively with a social conscience, or a commitment to helping others.

[Useful links:

• Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
• UnLtd's Refugee Award Scheme
• Immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs
• JumpStart Fund (US) ]