WA Social Entrepreneurs Ready to Hit the Books

The School of Social Entrepreneurs Australia is heading west to support the growth of Perth’s “burgeoning” social enterprise community.

Scarf – is a social enterprise, based in Melbourne, that runs a hospitality training program for young people.

As part of SSE’s entry into Western Australia, the school will run a four-month Accelerator Program in February for 14 entrepreneurs to work collaboratively with a team of facilitators, business experts and “seasoned” entrepreneurs to launch or grow an innovative social enterprise.

According to SSE Chief Executive Officer Celia Hodson, the Perth market was ready for the school to head its way and with the help of LotteryWest was able to make it happen.

And with students willing to fly to the east coast to attend SSE programs, she said, it was only natural to head to Perth, which SSE had been working on developing since January.

“It’s definitely a burgeoning market,” Hodson said.

SSE’s move west will also incorporate a full-time, Perth-based Recruitment and Network Officer that will not only be responsible for coordinating and conducting all recruitment activities for SSE programs across Australia but will be SSE’s team member on the ground in Western Australia, supporting the SSE Fellows Network and help grow its network of corporate and Not for Profit supporters.

The School also plans to build a team of Perth-based pro bono mentors to provided one-on-one support to program students and skills experts that are skilled in areas including business planning, governance, legal issues, marketing, communications and social impact measurement.

Perth-based SSE Fellows Basha Stasak and Kali Balint, who are part of Perth’s growing community of social entrepreneurs, will speak at the program’s information night on October 21.

Stasak is the general manager of Useful Inc, a Not for Profit in Perth that runs programs including the Big Help Mob – a “rent-a-crowd” that helps community and Not for Profit groups. Balint is a facilitator and mediator for the Indigenous Consulting Group, a specialist business and economic development consultancy firm that works with and for Aboriginal people.

Hodson said one shining example of the development of social enterprise in Perth was Spacecubed, which showed the state’s “burning desire for peer-to-peer learning”.

Spacecubed is built on a network of coworking, collaboration and innovation spaces, and communities across Western Australia. The spaces are co-designed with the communities that use them, which includes entrepreneurs, innovators and changemakers working on getting their ideas off the ground.

SSE will also run three days of Action Learning Facilitator Training in Perth this November to help individuals and teams across corporate, government and community sector organisations learn practices and problem solving approaches.

SSE, which also runs schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, are also in the “very early stages” of starting a pop-up school in Coffs Harbour.