Co-ordination : FAF gGmbH

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EUROPEAN CO-OPERATION - GREAT BRITAIN

The Social Enterprise Partnership

Its objectives are:

• To raise awareness of social enterprise and how to build the sector
• Improve the performance of social enterprise
• Make the social enterprise support system more effective
• Mainstream best practice and innovation to influence wider programmes of social inclusion and enterprise.

The DP partners are some of the key national bodies in the field. These are:

• Social Firms UK Ltd
• Development Trusts Association
• The Co-operative Union
• Social Enterprise London
• New Economics Foundation

Other national organisations will be closely involved in delivery

The project is needed because, despite the potential for social enterprise to contribute to social inclusion there are a number of well-attested barriers to its growth, including lack of awareness and mainstreaming, a fragile, fragmented and patchy support structure, a need to widen markets, a lack of evaluative models, inaccessible funding and legal complexity.

Project activities fall into two themes - enhancing business support and promoting learning and quality. Main areas of innovation are; bringing together all parts of the social enterprise sector - the development of new tools - learning across the sector - the development of a national professional development programme for the first time - examining routes to diversity for social enterprise - reviewing for the first time how the benefit system creates barriers to social enterprise employment.

The DP will be in two transnational partnerships, taking part in a wide range of information exchanges, joint product development, awareness raising and exchange visits for members of social enterprises. Events, publications and the web will be used to mainstream information across GB.

Contact:
Gerold Schwarz
Project Manager
Social Enterprise Partnership
Email: sepgb.co.uk