A Programme of Learning from Abroad

The Social Enterprise Partnership (SEP) is involved in two transnational partnerships:

A Programme of Learning from Abroad

Squares (involving partners in Sweden, Germany and Italy);

Le Mat (involving partners in Greece, Sweden, Germany and Italy).

The Partnership aims to work at a strategic level around our twin themes of promoting quality and strengthening business support and development. We are taking part in a range of working groups designed to facilitate information exchanges, joint product development, awareness raising and exchange visits for members of social enterprises covering the above themes. The main working groups we are involved in are detailed below.

Quality & Impact

The Partnership leads this working group. The objective of the work of this group is to help prove and improve quality and impact of social enterprise across Europe. The major activity of the working group over the project cycle will be to engage in a regular email newsgroup, sharing knowledge and understanding about how social enterprises seek to prove and improve their quality and impact across Europe.

We will be holding a high profile conference in spring 2004 in London around quality and impact tools for social enterprise. This will be open to all European partners, and partners will be encouraged to bring social enterprise representatives from their country with an interest in the area to the seminar to share in the learning. It is envisaged that after the seminar, partners and their social enterprise representatives will stay in the UK. During this period they would have the opportunity to meet UK social enterprises and to take part in a facilitated exchange of learning around quality and impact tools. There may also be an exchange visit arranged for social enterprises to meet German social enterprises that have experience in quality and impact issues.

Finance

This working group is considering the access to finance and barriers to take up in the social enterprise sector. Each partner will carry out research and make a brief survey of what is available in each member state. This information will include data from other projects and a report on existing literature. The information will be collated and research will be carried out into what is needed in each member state. This research will cover the skills needs as well as the financial requirements. There will be a round table even on social financing at the end of 2003.

Support Structures

This working group focuses upon the support available to social enterprises in each partner country. An analysis of the current position will be carried out at the local level by each partner and a short document that summarises the support structures in each of the partner countries will be produced.

Public Services And The Social Economy

The main aim of this working group is to share best practice and examples of social added value and to clarify EU ruling around added value in tendering documentation.
Partners will carry out research into current practices, focusing on methods of communication. All documentation will be exchanged and a comparison paper on the organisation of provision of services will be produced which will include examples of social added value and tendering processes. Work will be carried out into current EU regulations, particularly those affecting tendering processes so that best practice can be applied.

Exchange Visits

Alongside our involvement in working groups the Partnership will encourage UK social enterprises and support agencies to participate in European exchange and events in order to enable best practice learning. Each transnational partner organisation is carrying out research into identifying and classifying potential exchange organisations. Information will be collated onto a database which will simplify and enable the matching of exchanges. Our Partnership will develop and manage a simple bidding process for organisations wishing to take part in transnational exchanges.