Teaching Social Entrepreneurship

When Muhammad Yunus founded Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank almost 35 years ago, no one was there to teach him about social entrepreneurship. John Bird didn’t have any resources either when he started The Big Issue in 1991, reports Guardian.co.uk. Needless to say, social entrepreneurs are know to take this route alone. However, courses are bigging to spring up to help future socialpreneurs find their way. What does one of these programs do?

They are discussing the need to consider whether their ideas for changing society are right for society. In other sessions, they do a mixture of classroom and hands-on learning, covering subjects such as analysing a changing society, understanding the public sector and profit-reinvesting organisations; co-operatives and mutalising; funding and financing; recruiting and staffing; and trends and innovations.

This is broadly the ground covered by a lot of social enterprise programmes, with some being a bit heavier on the social issues discussions than the business side.

The majority on the course are keen to set up social enterprises, such as Shernese Cowan, 25, who used to work as a cashier in a high-street bank.

“I couldn’t have worked in a bank forever, watching loans being pushed on to people who couldn’t afford them,” she says. “I have some ideas about starting a social enterprise for young people and the course is helping me define how I’m going to do that and how I can make money from it. I don’t think I would have ended up setting anything up without coming here,” she says.

Photo by Rex Pe

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