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NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations (NZFVWO),
Thinking about this key funding question is what inspired Di Jennings to start exploring the opportunities presented by social enterprises. Di, who was a key organiser of February's Community Economic Development Conference, shared this insight with Wellingtonians who attended the associated forum organised by the NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations, in conjunction with ANGOA and the NZ Council of Social Services.
A major attraction of social enterprise is that it enables communities to create their own wealth and become independent, so they are not beholden to changing policies or local/central government, and can therefore control their own destinies.
The forum brought two international speakers from the Auckland conference to Wellington to share their community economic development experiences.
Aidan Pia, Executive Director of Senscot, spoke about Scotland's experiences with social enterprises, providing a number of case studies for people to explore via the web. These included:
Although each example was very different, the common factor was that they had all developed a trading activity that helped fund their broader aims. The way each was set up varied hugely, but they had filled a gap and found a way to generate their own funds through trading - the essence of social enterprise.
Factors in their success had been peer support, start-up funding, and support services for emerging and mature enterprises. "Some will fail, some will not make it, but many do," Aidan explained, stressing the need for resilience - especially when public funds are involved.
Aidan said the support and development needs for social enterprises are different from the wider third sector (ie: community and voluntary sector), and sometimes initiatives were viewed as "privatisation by the back door", but this was not his view.
Scotland had a long history of collective action and had built up extensive expertise and experience. This had created a sense of optimism to try new and different things. From there had come the concept of trying to generate income via social enterprises.
Aidan said that since being in NZ, he'd seen initiatives that he'd categorise as social enterprises, but that we may not have recognised them as such and we didn't have the same infrastructure to support them.
He explained that social enterprise provides viability and asset development (a topic covered by the 2nd speaker) enabled sustainability for communities.
Find out more about Aidan's organisation and see a range of social enterprise resources at: http://www.senscot.net
Listen to Aidan being interviewed on Access Radio's Collaborative Voices: http://www.accessradio.org.nz/collaborative_voices.html