Several of the Ambassadors were joined by leading civil servants and representatives from some of the UK’s biggest private businesses last Monday for the second Meeting of the Minds event.
The dinner event, hosted by social enterprise minister Angela Smith, was a forum for the sectors to discuss how they could take cross working to the next level. The emphasis was on having open and creative conversations about how to generate employment opportunities in the recession, and innovative approaches to employing hard to reach groups. Read Craig Dearden-Phillips’ blog post on the event.
Public service breakthroughs
Martin Kinsella and Dr Sam Everington are each now mentoring one of 20 health related social enterprises under the government’s ‘Right to request’ initiative, which sees NHS staff being supported to run their own social enterprises.
And, 400 people saw Martin speak at the Ministry of Justice social enterprise conference on 4 March.
Saeeda reaches far and wide with the social enterprise message
Since becoming an Ambassador, Saeeda Ahmed has increasingly brought her knowledge to larger and diverse audiences. This year, her sharing of information and efforts to inspire other social enterprises is reaching new levels.
She is currently preparing to go to Warsaw to give a talk to budding and new social entrepreneurs from across Europe and Asia. She will talk about growing a social business, and the global social enterprise movement. “Being an Ambassador has opened up a lot of opportunities for me to take what I’ve learned to more people. I’m thrilled to be the British ambassador at this event,” says Saeeda.
Importantly, when opportunities come to Saeeda, she is keen to use them to create opportunities for other social enterpreneurs. “I asked the British Council, who are organising my visit, about taking along some smaller social enterprises from the UK so they could also benefit. I’ve managed to get places for two new health related enterprises and an international development one,” said the Ambassador.
Similarly, Saeeda took four social enterprises that she has been working with along to an important event in London this week exploring social enterprise in the NHS. “They were pleased and said they would never have the opportunity normally to see the workings of the NHS so closely. They did a lot of networking at the event and there are some potential new contracts in the pipeline for them because of this,” she explained.
This is just a snapshot of what Saeeda is currently doing, not including her new contract with the University of Bradford to give training, mentoring and coaching to 50 local social enterprises.
Media coverage
- A video case study of Victor Adebowale’s enterprise Turning Point appeared on the Telegraph website this week.
- Daniel Heery’s Cybermoor was also featured in the Beccles and Bungay Journal, discussing how the social enterprise could be replicated around the UK.
- A film about Divine Chocolate, run by Sophi Tranchell, was broadcast on Teachers TV.
- The launch of new social enterprise hub Brightspace, which had Craig Dearden Phillips as keynote speaker, was covered by the East Anglian Daily Times
