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Social Entrepreneurship in education systems

Education plays a crucial role in shaping the minds and opinions of the future generation. Debate regarding the much needed changes in our current education systems has been ongoing for some time now – if we want to equip children with knowledge and skills that they will need tomorrow, we cannot teach them things that were relevant yesterday. This has been argued also concerning the entrepreneurial education – for too many years teachers in Economics classes have emphasized only the traditional business models – therefore promoting entrepreneurship where the main success indicator is profit.

 

British Council addresses these issues in the report “Social Entrepreneurship in education”, by providing in-depth analysis of the entrepreneurship education in several European countries as well as already existing Social Entrepreneurship education examples and suggestions and recommendations for more successful implementation of SE education in the classes of Business and Economics. This report argues that there are several reasons why national education systems need to seriously consider incorporation of Social Entrepreneurship education, mainly focusing on the fact that the world around us has changed tremendously but education system remains as it was decades ago. Moreover, authors of the report emphasize the importance of teaching students the skill-set that will be useful for children in a variety of future professions, not only encouraging them to strive academically by remembering huge amounts of information: “Many of the skills and gifts that make a great entrepreneur are not highly valued within a traditional school environment, yet they may resonate with children who do not feel engaged by school or by some educational approaches. Social entrepreneurship education could be an opportunity for those children to shine, not another subject to fail.”

 

The report gives a food for thought for everyone who cares about the skills, knowledge and also welfare of the future generations. If we want to equip students with versatile knowledge and teach things that will not only help them to be better entrepreneurs, but also contribute to environment and society, it will require teamwork and collaboration of government institutions, teachers and social entrepreneurs to make the years spent in classroom more meaningful and valuable.

 

Read full report here: https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/british_council_social_entrepreneurship_in_education_web_final.pdf

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How to find your passion idea and knowing what you want

Starting a social enterprise based on an idea is not always easy. It takes courage and self reflection to fine tune what it is we truly want to experience. There are articles that debate whether passion for what you create is something that is there from the word go, or something that develops through time. An idea that is derived through passion or a process derived by passion I see as the same thing, it comes from an inner desire or joy.

What do you really want?

Ideas are something that is a gift we give ourselves, sometimes they become so lost in the day to day life, because we take them as part of everyday living. “What should we do tonight? Oh, I know, let’s do this.” That very example is the derivative of where do ideas come from. It starts with a question.

So the questions I asked myself at that time, and have continued to ask myself to fine tune the process: “What do I really want?” “What would l like to experience?” And you would think with this simple question, we can come up with a simple answer. But usually we don’t. And if we do have an inclination it usually starts with a feeling. If you’re tired, you may want rest. So the feeling you get when you ask yourself this question is: rest. So the idea is: let me lie down. Action: I lie down. (these examples seem a bit mundane, but basics I think help us understand the complex: ourselves.)

Why is it so difficult to know at times?

So why is it so difficult for us to answer what we want, for ourselves, for our lives? Well, often we think of reasons why we can’t before we can even say the words out of our mouths. They’re patterns of cant’s and should’s and have to be’s. Beliefs about ourselves and the world we are currently in.

From my own experience, I can certainly testify to this one. And more so, is the answer to that question was always a bit foggy, because it was layered with patterns of ‘pleasing others’, always thinking about others before me. And it’s an admirable trait to think of everyone, but not so helpful when we forget to give ourselves the very same attention. And through development we learn to focus on it from a ‘we’ perspective: You and me. I’ll add another question in there to stimulate the process: “What would I like to see in the world, for myself… and others?”

Know yourself

Ultimately I’m talking about introspection. I’m talking about getting to know yourself. Again, we usually get to know ourselves through our interactions with others, and don’t take the time to spend as much quality time with ourselves: still time. Through reflection of these questions, a pen and paper is usually handy. Or even talking out loud to yourself (and yes its healthy to talk to yourself, we do it all the time in our heads, just make sure your alone it might freak others out).

And that’s pretty much where I stop there. This blog isn’t about a self help course, even if this post sounds like it slightly. There are many self help books out there, to assist with the process if you require it. Ultimately I am petitioning for self reflection, to understand yourself, by asking yourself these questions, you may unearth some very latent desires that may not have had a voice until now.

The process: Self and Business

In business, the practice of evaluating and reviewing one’s process against metrics is actually very much the same process. We look at the reality of where we currently are; we understand what the causes of the situation are and then make effective decisions to align with the goals and objectives of the company vision. As social entrepreneurs, if we can develop this skill for ourselves and our own personal process, we add value and contribute an important skill to the whole. Understand it’s a process. As in businesses we have continual check-points to evaluate the effectiveness of our actions, so too will be the case for ourselves. We are continually changing as we learn and grow and so too will the process of self-evaluation, it’s a process.

The journey is the gift

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it not but a gift you can give yourself and those in your lives, to truly understand yourself, what your desires are, and making actionable choices that see you living it, rather than denying it? A life truly worth living, fulfilled.

Related articles:

The hero’s journey: The social entrepreneur’s journey

Creative Leadership: Introspection http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougguthrie/2012/08/09/creative-leadership-introspection/

Why Introspection is vital for business owners

Five Creative Exercises to find you passion

Photo by SH Lam on Unsplash

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Online collaboration tool – Monday.com

This article is an excerpt from the full article on picksaa.com. To read the full article go here.

Business world changes along with technological progress. It’s inevitable as the two are closely correlated. Business stimulates innovation and innovation contributes to the reshaping of work. One drives the other.

And only over the last decades, the increase in the use of technology in the workplace has significantly increased. It’s visible in various areas and one of them is the implementation of business software. Project management software is one of them.

Using project management software is mandatory for most of the organizations. But it’s willingly used also by small businesses, non-profit organizations, startups or even individuals. No wonder since it helps to optimize and automize processes, make communication and collaboration easier, and increase employees’ efficiency. 

In our article on best project management software we described 8 tools helpful in growing a business. One of them was monday.com. And in this article, I will show you and lead you through the software step by step to help you better understand it and how it can help you become a better project manager, no matter where and how you work. Let’s go!

What is monday and how to use it?

Monday was founded in 2012 and launched as an independent startup in February 2014. The company’s mission is “creating a workplace environment of transparency, ownership, and accountability, to empower managers and their teams.”  Today the software is used by 350,000 people, from 76 countries, in 40,000 teams.

Monday.com-review

monday is categorized as a project management software that can be used by any type of team operating in any industry. There are no limits as to who and how can use it. Among organizations who use it you can find Discovery Channel, wix.com, or wework. It’s suitable for small and large teams. The pricing largely varies depending on the number of people in your team. You can choose from 4 variants:

  • Basic, starting from $25/month
  • Standard, starting from $39/month
  • Pro, starting from $59/month
  • Enterprise, starting from $118/month

You can upgrade, downgrade or cancel your plan any time you want without any consequences. And if you’re not sure which plan to choose, you can simply contact monday Support Team. And to get the most out of the tool, monday has a knowledge base full of helpful articles. You will find all information on the basics to the most advanced features offered by monday. You can also check their video tutorials if you prefer a guide in the visual form.

They even offer the assistance of their local partner to help you onboard your team (which in my opinion is not necessary, monday is really easy-in-use). You can choose from various locations in North America, South and Central America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. They allow you to get help all over the globe. That’s something not many software providers offer.

The software is a cloud-based platform which may concern some in terms of privacy. But monday assures that your data is safe with them. They are GDPR compliant, have ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27018:2014 certifications, and SOC2 Type II security certification. Therefore, you can be sure that your data is protected on the highest level.

That’s monday, project management, collaboration, team management software. Let’s see what you can do with it.

How does it all work?

Setting up an account on monday is as easy as pie. You simply have to provide an email and a password. Then you receive a confirmation code (security on the highest level indeed!) and can begin the full process of creating an account. I’m going to show you what you can do with monday step by step.

Monday.com-registration-1024x460

I decided to choose a free trial to see how monday works and whether it meets my expectations. I am asked how large my team is (for now I am choosing ‘only me’) and what I want to manage. From the available options, I’m opting for ‘to-do’s & lists.’  You can also choose projects for clients, internal projects, sales & CRM, product roadmap & backlog, agile development, orders & production, HR & recruiting, and others which you can specify.

This is useful as it helps to orient you on what exactly you want to do with the software. However, at this stage, you cannot choose several options which is a slight disadvantage for those who want to use monday to manage a wide scope of areas in an organization.

Now that I have decided what I want to manage, I can invite team members. But I’ll do it later as I want to discover the secrets of monday and all its features before I onboard my team, simply to help them get accustomed to the app.

This article is an excerpt from the full article on picksaa.com. To read the full article go here.

Full credit and pictures for this excerpt of the article goes to picksaa.com

-> Try out monday.com for 14-days free

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Inicio är en av 2019 års Change Leaders och får stöd av Reach for Change i upp till fem år

Ikväll får Mikaela Illanes och Mark Smith delade scenen med två andra change leaders, Drömstort och Mobile Stories, i en ceremoni på Fryshuset i Stockholm då Reach for Change presenterade årets Change Leaders. Att utses till Change Leader innebär ett ekonomiskt och rådgivande stöd i upp till fem år för att kunna utveckla ens innovativa idéer och kunna göra skillnad för så många barn som möjligt.

Att få utmärkelsen Change Leader innebär:

  • Finansiellt stöd som är behovsanpassat för att personen ska kunna fokusera på utvecklingen av sin innovation och idé.
  • Rådgivning och coaching inom områden där personen och verksamheten har störst behov att utvecklas. Fokus ligger på effektmätning, finansiell hållbarhet, ledarskap, uppskalning och systemförändring.
  • Tillgång till Reach For Changes globala nätverk.

Juryn som utsåg årets Change Leaders bestod av representanter från Reach for Change, Tele2, Kinnevik, Roschier, Hugo Stenbecks stiftelse, Rädda barnen och Qvartz.

– Det har varit en otroligt spännande process i år, med många starka initiativ och drivna personer. Våra partners i juryn fick verkligen kämpa för att välja ut vinnarna. Jag ser fram emot att Drömstort, Inicio och Mobile stories blir en del av vårt inkubatorprogram, då vi ser stor potential för dessa verksamheter att växa och hjälpa barn och unga i Sverige, säger Sofia Breitholtz, VD Reach for Change.
Om Reach for change

Reach for Change är en internationell ideell organisation. Genom sektorsöverskridande partnerskap hittar, utvecklar och skalar Reach for Change idéer och innovationer som bidrar till att göra livet bättre för barn. Vår core-produkt är stödprogram för sociala entreprenörer.

Om Change Leader

En Change Leader är en enastående person som med stor passion och drivkraft jobbar för barns rättigheter och att se till alla barn når sin fulla potential.

En Change Leader agerar förebild och inspirerar andra att engagera sig genom att vara en del an en global rörelse som skapar en bättre värld för barn och unga.

Inicio är en ideell förening som bistår skolor, bibliotek, science parks och andra mötesplatser för utbildning och innovation med att erbjuda tillämpade övningar i teknik och digitalt skapande med målet att stärka elevernas/besökarnas/projektgruppers förmåga att utveckla sina idéer och färdigheter. Den långsiktiga ambitionen är att öka alla medborgares digitala delaktighet så att fler förstår och kan bidra till framtidens smarta och hållbara samhällen.

Våra evenemang för olika målgrupper drivs med hjälp av vårt nätverk av mentorer, svenska och utländska masterstudenter som förutom tekniskt kunnande bidrar med andra perspektiv, kulturer och förebilder. Vi har utvecklat konceptet Mentorspace som bygger på mentorskap och kunskapsdelning och kan genom vår metod för Learning Analytics ta fram mätdata om hur elever/deltagare lär sig att förstå och utvecklas med övningar i tillämpad teknik.

Källan: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/inicio/pressreleases/inicio-aer-en-av-2019-aars-change-leaders-och-faar-stoed-av-reach-for-change-i-upp-till-fem-aar-2830878

5 lessons for social entrepreneurs on how to change the system

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship manages the largest network of late-stage social entrepreneurs in the world. Yet when you talk to most entrepreneurs in our community, they describe their impact as a “drop in the ocean”. They say things such as: “I’m not even 5% of the way to where I want to be”.

For a field long obsessed by the holy grail of organizational scale, the social entrepreneurship sector is coming to terms with the limits of incremental growth. The needs are just too large and too urgent, and the models for scaling that we have developed remain too narrow and take too long. Conventional scaling models borrowed from the private sector, such as branch replication and social franchising, seem woefully inadequate to meet the size of the need.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many highly successful social entrepreneurs who have achieved significant scale, along with the intermediary organizations and funders that support them, are starting to coalesce around the concept of “systems change”. It can go by different terms, including “equilibrium change”, “systems entrepreneurship” and “transformative scale”, but many people still conflate these concepts with the operational scale of single organizations. On the contrary, we believe that you can run a small organization and still change a system.

How is a “systems change” approach or strategy distinct from a direct service model? What does the pathway to systems change look like and how do you get there? Clearly, there is huge appetite to learn from the successes and failures of other social entrepreneurs, and to understand what key decision points made all the difference to the outcome.

Please continue for the full article to:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/5-lessons-social-entrepreneurs-change-systems-schwab/

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Did you check GoToMeeting? A new tool for conference calls

Recently I have come across the GoToMeeting collaboration tool. The best part of it is the ability to use your phone and get connected to multiple people from different countries into one conference call by dialing a dedicated local number and special code. Below is a short review of the app and the link.

Thanks to cheap bandwidth and a wide selection of video conferencing services, trying to coordinate meetings with clients in various geographic locations and interacting with remote workers is no longer the logistical and technical workplace challenge it used to be. GoToMeeting (which begins at $14 per month, billed annually) is one of the better-known video conferencing services (along with Cisco WebEx Meetings and Editors’ Choice service ClickMeeting). But GoToMeeting (which was acquired from Citrix by LogMeIn in January 2017) no longer dominates the space and might even be falling behind the competition in some areas.

If you’ve ever been part of an online demo or viewed a web presentation, then chances are you have used GoToMeeting (or Cisco WebEx Meetings, for that matter). Therefore, you already know a little bit about how this kind of software works. While the service is capable of screen sharing, demos, and even remote troubleshooting, this review focuses on GoToMeeting’s video conferencing capabilities.

GoToMeeting Packages

GoToMeeting offers three versions of its software: Starter, Pro, and Plus. GoToMeeting Starter (which, as stated earlier, begins at $14 per month, billed annually) supports up to 10 participants and GoToMeeting Pro (which begins at $29 per month, billed annually) supports up to 150 participants. GoToMeeting Plus (which begins at $39 per month, billed annually) can handle up to 250 participants on a call. There is also a free version of GoToMeeting, which offers limited features for up to 50 participants. GoToMeeting doesn’t require a credit card to sign up for the free 14-day trial, a practice I wish was more prevalent among business services. It also offers a 60-day refund, which is also unusual.

A big portion of the appeal for GoToMeeting is that it’s part of a larger “GoTo” line of products, including GoToWebinar and GoToTraining. There is no price break for purchasing multiple products, however, nor is there a bundled option to buy. But, if you are already using GoToWebinar for online events for up to 2,000 attendees, then it makes sense to just stay in the product family when looking for a more focused product for smaller audiences.

you can continue to the original page about the review here.

Here is a link to a general overview of handy video editing softaware:

https://www.avasam.com/best-video-editing-software/

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Deloitte Social Investment Leveraging Index in CEE

The new Deloitte Social Investment Leveraging Index (DSILI) developed by Deloitte in partnership with EVPA and GSEN provides arguments on why investing for impact through social investment may yield significant social returns in Central and Eastern Europe. Showcasing the social investment leverage across the four sub-regions in CEE (the Balkans, South Eastern Europe, the Baltics and the Visegrad Countries), this report argues that by investing in one of the countries of this region, one is contributing to the growth and development of an integrated Europe. The report also offers specific steps one can take to actively invest in the region.

 You can download social_impact_investment_report
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Social Innovation Tournament

The Social Innovation Tournament recognises and supports the best European social entrepreneurs. It is organised in a different country every year to reward and sponsor European entrepreneurs whose primary purpose is to generate a social, ethical or environmental impact.

All projects compete for the General Category and Special Category 1st and 2nd Prizes of EUR 50 000 and EUR 20 000 respectively. In 2019, the Special Category Prizes will go to projects focusing on sustainable consumption and sustainable production (including circular economy).  Two projects will be selected to attend INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship programme in Fontainebleau, France.

The prizes are awarded by a jury of specialists from the academic and business worlds.

Projects are typically related to combating unemployment, marginalisation of disadvantaged communities and promoting access to education in a wide range of fields, from education and health care to the natural or urban environment, using new technologies, new systems, and new processes.

The tournament runs in two rounds. A selection committee, comprised mainly of EIB Group experts in innovation, the environment, and other relevant disciplines, selects 15 finalists. The finalists are invited to a mentoring bootcamp to provide them with the necessary guidance to finalise their proposals. At the final event, all the finalists have to present and defend their project to a jury of social innovation specialists.

This year’s Social Innovation Tournament will take place on 24 October, in Dublin, Ireland.

Finalists from all SIT editions become members of the SIT Alumni Network. As members, they benefit from numerous training opportunities such as (i) applying to attend an SIT Impact Bootcamp, a full-time executive training course focused on scaling, pitching and engagement with investors, (ii) join innovation grants programme, (iii) participate in conferences around Europe and network with investors, venture philanthropists and foundations who can help their project to scale. Furthermore, to explore synergies and complementarities with the growing community of social entrepreneurs supported by the Institute through the SIT, the Institute is supporting the first social incubator in the North of Portugal (Amarante).

If you have any questions, please email institute@eib.org. To register for the final event, please click here.

For more information about the SIT, please click on the links below.

Rules for applicants

Key dates & deadlines

Frequently Asked Questions

Source: https://institute.eib.org/whatwedo/social-2-2/social-innovation-tournament-2/?fbclid=IwAR1q0Y58In1R7a9IrN4BtYwGtD_Eeo8TZunazETDAq9vNhkvAEli5Ej9vuA