Volunteering is an important aspect of social enterprises. Without volunteers, many social enterprises would not be able to continue working or developing their services. The importance of volunteering is recognized by the national volunteer development agency, Volunteer Ireland. (https://www.volunteer.ie/) They help celebrate and promote volunteering in Ireland through a number of volunteer centers. These centers[…]

This week myself and Dr Shane O’Sullivan are attending the 7th International Social Enterprise Research Conference organised by the EMES network. The conference is being hosted by Sheffield Hallam University and it is the first time that the conference has been held in the United Kingdom. The EMES International Research Network has held major international[…]

On May 16th, 2019, a national social entrepreneurship conference called “Woman – Creator of Social Business: The Experience of Hillary Project” was held in Vilniaus Kolegija / University of Applied Sciences, Lithuania. The conference presentations were concentrating specifically on women and social entrepreneurship. The main topics were the following: empowerment of women in social business;[…]

On May 24th almost 200 participants gathered to the 10th Social Entrepreneurship Forum in Riga, Latvia. Can social entrepreneurship be a successful business? This was the main question of this year’s forum. The answers were sought during the lectures, workshops, and competitions throughout the day. The first part of the day was dedicated to the[…]

Germany has a long-standing tradition of social entrepreneurs – beginning with Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, who helped initiate the cooperative movement in the 19th century. He created the Raiffeisen organization for poor farmers who could not afford to buy seeds and fertilizer but could buy them cheaper together. The “green credit” provided for them to pay[…]

On May 18, 2019 the VIII Municipality of Rome together with associations, cooperatives and local committees organized the second edition of the Social Expo (social, sustainable and inclusive) in the Municipality area in Via Benedetto Croce 50. Over 40 local realities have joined the second Social Expo and have exposed and explained their activities to[…]

The InTSEnSE project has been conducting research into the support available to internationalise social enterprises. The full report will be published shortly, but here is a small taster of some of the findings. To help them internationalise, social enterprises are able to take advantage of a variety of support that exists at a European level,[…]

The Social and Solidarity Economy in Greece emerged through cooperative activities that were developed over the years; however, the legislation and political movements were settled very recently to drive their activity. The sector in Greece is in a very early stage compared to other European countries and most of the social organizations are of small[…]

There are a number of upcoming events focusing on Social Enterprise in the Midwest and southern regions of Ireland. On the 13th of May Dunhill Ecopark in Waterford is hosting “Revitalising Rural Ireland – Empowering Communities through Social Enterprise.” This event consists of an expert panel of speakers, including Gerry Kiely, Head of the European[…]

In terms of the project, we held our final project meeting in Freiburg in April 2019. We were able to work on the educational materials and the infographic outputs from the project. We were also able to visit three social enterprises that were trading or thinking of trading internationally and discuss our findings and the[…]