Getting started with SEW - Wolverhampton Voluntary Sector Council

by James Clarke
6 years ago
2046 Views

Welcome to the first Social Enterprise Wolverhampton (SEW) blog.

SEW was launched in September 2018 to grow the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) and charity sector in Wolverhampton and introduce the idea of ‘applying for social investment’ as an additional option to ‘applying for funding’. Social investment is about achieving both social and financial outcomes. It is finance that needs to be repaid and may not be suitable for every organisation, however, there is a lot that you can learn along the way through, for example, business mentoring and peer support.

The first six weeks of SEW have been jam packed starting with the Social Enterprise World Forum (Twitter: @SEWF) in Edinburgh where I had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world including Bruktawit Tigabu who set up a social enterprise and creates learning materials for children and young people in Ethiopia. Check out her Whiz Kids Workshop and her interview with Pioneers Post.

The response to SEW has been very promising; we ran our first social investment workshop on the 3rd October for those who responded to our initial SEW publicity. We have levivard.com also provided 1-1 sessions with the attendees following the 3rd October workshop and had the opportunity to look in more detail at their business plans/financial summary information etc. to see if there is a match with social investment.

We plan to run more workshops throughout the coming months on different aspects of social investment, taking into account the needs of the local Wolverhampton VCSE and charity sector.

Alongside the above, we are developing the SEW page of our website where we hope to have resource materials, information and webinars in the future.

We will also be running a Let’s Talk Good Finance Event in Wolverhampton in January. Check out the Good Finance website for everything you need to know about social investment.

In the meantime, please watch this space as SEW develops or contact me if you would like to know more:

Sharon Nanan-Sen, Social Enterprise and Investment Adviser, Voluntary Sector Support, snanan-sen@wolverhamptonvsc.org.uk

Follow us on Twitter: @SEW_2018