EU working group GECES published report on Social Entrepreneurship
The working group of the European Commission in charge of social entrepreneurship (GECES) recently published it’s report.
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How does Social Entrepreneurship relate with Sustainable Development Goals?
Social entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals, startups and entrepreneurs develop and fund solutions that directly address social issues. Organizations that are active in the social economy sector are sometimes confused with non-profit organizations, but in fact they are not profit-driven but focus on creating social or environmental changes.
In this context, the key parameters of social entrepreneurship are social benefit, democratic and transparent governance, fair economic relations and structures, and all this, implemented with credibility, promoting social contribution and collective action.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The 17 SDGs are linked – meaning that action in one area affects outcomes in others, in most practices economic development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.
While the SDGs are horizontal, several specific SDGs relate directly to social issues:
- SDG 1: Zero poverty – End all forms of poverty, everywhere.
- SDG 3: Good health and well-being – Ensure a life of health and well-being promote well-being for all, at all ages.
- SDG 4: Quality education – Ensure free, equal and equitable access to quality education for all, for all free, free and free education by promoting opportunities for lifelong learning.
- SDG 5: Gender equality – Achieve gender equality and gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
- SDG 10: Fewer inequalities within and between countries
Social Economy organisations’ activities are making visible the impact of their ideas in diverse areas. Social Economy complements countries direct actions to provide quality social services in a cost-effective way. It also complements their efforts to integrate young people and disadvantaged groups into the labour market and society at large and contributes to the diversity of corporate forms, increasing citizens’ and consumers’ choices and the quality of products/services. At the same time, Social Economy’s approaches contribute to the green and digital transition by providing sustainable goods and services, bridging the digital divide and facilitating the green transition.
These organizations contribute to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN at national and European level, as their activities fight poverty, lead to sustainable cities and communities, responsible production and consumption and sustainable development financing initiatives, while securing sustainable planet for generations to come.
Original article available on Revitalese.eu website.
Service Design Tools: for your design workshops
Whenever you need to develop a solution to some problem – let’s say public service, product, or experience for your customers, you may need to ask your co-workers and potential customers for help. Service Design Tools is developed to support you in this innovation journey.
Founded as a research activity, Service Design Tools platform has been developed to a helpful repository of methods and tools for learning and teaching activities. In the result of a collaboration between POLI.design, Master in Service Design and the Service Innovation Academy of POLI.design – Politecnico di Milano, the interactive platform was designed for the users.
The platform of Service Design Tools offers resources and tutorials explaining how to approach a specific design challenges:
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How to find new promising opportunities?
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How to improve an existing service experience?
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How to make a digital service real?
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How to validate a service concept?
There you can find the tools, that are the most appropriate for your audience, service characteristics and the stage of design. For Issue cards, Business Model Canvas, Interview Guides, Journey Maps, Evaluation Matrix, Synthesis Wall, Role Playing, Service Prototype, Value Proposition Canvas, Service Blueprint, User Stories and many more – BROWSE HERE.
Source: https://servicedesigntools.org
This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
Impacting Sweden: Social Return on Investment
Social Return on investment (or SROI), is an approach to understand and manage the value of the social, economic and environmental outcomes created by an activity or an organisation. It is based on a set of principles that are applied within a framework, for example a Social Enterprise serving a certain need in society.
In addtion, SROI seeks to include the values of people often excluded from markets in the same terms as used in markets. Moreover, SROI can be seen as a framework to structure thinking and understanding. Another similar method which has been developed in Sweden is called “Socioekonomisk bokslut – socio economical accounting“ which has been around for long time.
The method uses alternative cost accounting in which one measures the costs of not making a certain activity. For exampe a person with drug problems who is not commiting crimes and starts to work because of a specific programme will largely benefit society.
The method has come up with how to calucalate that cost or benefit seen from a societal view. A number of activities in Sweden has been done over the years to promote and learn more about impact measurement. One of the bigger ones was a SROI training course carried out among actors of the social economy.
The course’s aim was to give the participants support and increased confidence in carrying out an SROI analysis and to increase its spread. In general most actors in society should be interested in impact analysis in one way or another. It can be from the governmental, regional and local authorities.
Social entrepreneurs ‘impact measurement’ is an important tool to verbalize what they are doing and also to understand the values they create for various stakeholders.
Actors supporting SROI
1) Institute for Social and Ecological Economics. This is run by Ingvar Nilsson and Anders Wadeskog, pioneers of the Impact Measurement field in Sweden. The institute has developed the “Socio-Economic Accounting method“ discussed earlier. Moreover they have recently started, in January 2015, a 3-year project supported by Postkodlotteriet to develop a Social Impact Bond which could fit the Swedish context.
2) SERUS This for-profit business has promoted and supported the development of SROI in Sweden since 2011. Reports and general services, mainly in Swedish, can be found at: http://www.sroi.se/ and on the SERUS homepage: http://serus. se/; Comprehensive report on the SOUL project run by SERUS: http://www.sroi.se/filer/SROI-report_The_advanced_ SROI_training_course.pdf
3) Pay-Off This for-profit business has developed a certification programme for Socio-Economic analysis. They provide general support for evaluations and action-learning research. http://www.payoff.se/index.php
4) Sofisam Non-Profit supporting the development of WISE. They have come up with several reports on how to apply SROI, Socioeconomic accounting, etc. Among others this mapping can be used/and are used in other countries outside Sweden
In general few social enterprises in Sweden have specific reports related to impact measurement. Instead many of them put the information on their homepages. Likely the most comprehensive report on Impact Measurement of a Swedish Social Enterprise was done by Vägen ut. One can find a combination of storytelling and quantitative data, including a socio-economy accounting report.
Youth Upskilling and Experience Through Social Innovation
Watch this lively conversation with Estefania Fernandez, a serial educational entrepreneur, youth leader and polyglot originally from Spain. After relocating to Berlin, Estefania created her “Business Model Republic” Meetup group to connect with others. This group exploded to more than 6 thousand members, and became an obvious launching point for her latest venture: e-bloom. E-bloom is an international community where young business graduates gain skills by participating in social innovation projects.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Fe9Blbwp0[/embedyt]
This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
Social enterprises and procurement legislation
Every year, over 250 000 public authorities in the EU spend around 14% of GDP on the purchase of services, works and supplies. In many sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection and the provision of health or education services, public authorities are the principal buyers. (Source)
How can the social enterprises take their part in public procurements?
The new general, utility, and concession directives on public procurement entered into force in April 2014. These should have been implemented into national legislation within the EU until the 18th of April 2016. In Finland at least we’ll be waiting a bit longer for the actual new piece of legislation that goes under the name the ”public procurement law” – hopefully the wait will not be for too long anymore. At least so far we’ve had the initial version of the law to read, but the law itself is estimated to be in force at the end of this year. However, as the actual time has already passed in implementing the directives into our national legislation, from 18th April onwards the directives have come into force already partly.
What good things is the new legislation bringing if one thinks about it from the social entreprises’ perspective? At least these things:
- The incrementation of the national public procurement tresholds;
- The improved opportunities for small enterprises to take part in the biddings (basically it should be easier and cheaper for small and medium-sized enterprises to bid for public contracts);
- The new rules also allow more usage of social and environmental criteria.
