I have been delivering training in London and surrounding areas for the support agencies that I respect the most on business and financial planning for social enterprises. This experience has been bitter sweet. The sessions usually run smoothly aided by practical activities, templates, best practice examples, warnings and ice breakers. It is sweet that training is one of the things that I do best. However, it is bittering to notice that most trainees are not anywhere near taking control of their organisations' destinies through a business plan. Business planning is just an illusion when an organisation is facing life-threatening income reductions and staff redundancies and when the day to day pressures of keeping afloat deter people from thinking strategically.
I have also been preparing an entire training module on social enterprise and innovation which I'll be delivering for a week in Vietnam during May. I've been trying to put together a coherent picture of the social economy around the world drawing on the best examples from Latin America, Africa, Asia, USA and the UK in a way that makes sense for government officials, NGO workers and entrepreneurs.
I am still working trying to provide some strategic and mundane support for two fantastic, bottom up social businesses in London. One is a community-led nursery operating in a very deprived ward of Lambeth and the other is an entertainment agency led by young people. You wouldn't believe the clarity of purpose that moves these two initiatives. And you wouldn't believe either that they are preaching and practising social enterprise without really speaking its fancy language or being connected to any of the 'key stakeholders' that make up England's pretty elaborated support and network infrastructure.
PhD wise, I have been interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs with mind blowing ideas for social change, with a good track record of developing and scaling sustainable social businesses and more importantly, with a good sense of humour that helps them to continue. I am also observing and participating from the formation of some extraordinary initiatives to democratise knowledge, led by the more innovative practitioners in the field (seriously, I will be writing about it once they are not confidential).
And finally, I have also been networking through a series of coordinated events. Networking (only one letter away from not working) has now become a routinised activity that only interests me if it helps me secure support for the causes that I believe in or for the organisations that I work for. I am meeting a great lot of smiley and energetic people but I am trying to harness the power and experience of only a few. I feel fortunate, overwhelmed and grateful with those that share their experiences and knowledge with me and it would be great if more people had access to the spontaneous conversations that I am having.
I am going back to Colombia. I don't know when and certainly I haven't started thinking about the how. But I am going back. I therefore need to take the learning with me. The examples, the ideas that can somehow be replicated or transposed. I will also be inviting some of the great people that I have met to spend some time there doing research, teaching, developing fledging SEs from the bottom up, rethinking and improving my country, my sunny city. I do not take this task lightly and I am working hard on developing my tribe selectively.
I read somewhere that the world needs both social and conventional entrepreneurship. But one type is sustainable and the other isn't. The argument and the future are clear for me.
