Twenty-eight individuals with a love of social enterprise have successfully competed to win a two-hour mentoring session with their Social Enterprise Ambassador of choice.

As some of the most entrepreneurial and ethical brains in Britain, the Social Enterprise Ambassadors represent a wealth of experience and know-how, and this February they launched a competition to offer people the chance to win the benefit of their expertise.

The competition launched at Voice10 and was open throughout February and March. It attracted more than 130 entries from existing and would-be social entrepreneurs keen to learn from those who have already been there and done it.

Amongst the winners was Udeni Salmon who hopes to set up a social enterprise to support suicide prevention.  Speaking of her win Udeni said:

"I am delighted to have won a mentoring session with the inspirational Claire Dove. I strongly believe that women are under-represented as leaders in the public, private and voluntary sector - BAME women particularly so.

“Claire is an example of a woman who has set up her own, successful organisation that believes in inspiring and training women and has been able to make a profit from this belief.   I hope she can give me confidence, management tips and take a critical look at my business case to help my organisation be successful."
 
Fellow winner Mark Swift, Founder and Project Manager of Wellbeing Project CIC, will be spending time with Craig Dearden-Phillips.

“I'm really looking forward to meeting one of the country's most successful social entrepreneurs, hearing more about his journey, and what we might learn as we grow and develop our own social enterprise, the Wellbeing Project,” he said.

The Ambassadors were delighted to take part in the competition as many of them have benefited from the advice of a mentor themselves.

Dai Powell, CEO of the highly successful HCT Group, said:

“If the social enterprise movement is to continue to flourish, then we need more social enterprises in every sector of our economy.  I believe that mentoring is a really important way for established social enterprises to support new social entrepreneurs and to grow the sector.

“I’m greatly looking forward to meeting Pierre, who I’ll be mentoring. I hope that Pierre finds mentoring as rewarding as I have – it has certainly helped me at every stage of HCT Group’s development.”

Dai’s mentee, Pierre Fox,  is hoping to set up a community transport social enterprise employing individuals who have suffered with mental health problems.

“I’m very pleased to have been given the chance to meet Dai. It’s a great opportunity to get advice on how to create a profitable business which can create positive change and I’m hoping to gain a great deal from the meeting,” says Pierre.

Unsurprisingly lots of the matches feature overlap in the areas of interest of mentor and mentee, offering both the chance to learn something new.

Martin Kinsella, CEO of P3 the social inclusion charity and social enterprise, will be mentoring Cathy Eastburn of Good Vibrations - a charity with aspirations to become a social enterprise.   In her work within the justice and health sectors, Cathy will have encountered many of the same issues and opportunities as Martin, giving them much to talk about.

“This is a great opportunity for me to learn about the brilliant work Cathy and her team are doing using music to bring about positive change in prisons and secure hospitals - and for me to help Cathy think about where Good Vibrations is at the moment, where they would like to be and how they will go about getting there,” says Martin.

The prized mentoring sessions will be taking place throughout June so keep checking the website for the latest news.