Greetings from Down Under!
I write from Melbourne Australia where I’ve been attending the Global Shifts Social Enterprise Conference at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. I’m here as a guest of the Australian government to speak on a plenary panel with social entrepreneurs from around the globe about trends in social enterprise. I had the rather gargantuan task of representing trends in social enterprise in North America. Others on the panel were from Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.
It was striking how the challenges and successes of social enterprise are similar around the world. Everywhere, individuals and small groups are having great success in specific enterprises. Two very cool enterprises I learned about here are STREAT, which has found a financially sustainable way to provide jobs for troubled youth while advancing local organic food, and Mejdi, which is leveraging tourism to build bridges between warring factions in conflict-ridden parts of the world while also making money.
But nowhere are these individuals speaking in a united voice to support a new role for business as a force for positive social change. PCV’s Great Social Enterprise Census, our effort to count and describe social enterprise in the United States so we can shape a unified policy agenda to support business and investment making money and doing good, is absolutely critical. Visit the Great Social Enterprise Census today…and tell your friends!
Over the next few days, I’ll be meeting with Federal government officials, state government officials in Victoria and New South Wales, and many representatives of the philanthropic, nonprofit and business sectors, all to share PCV’s experience in community development and impact investing. More on that later…
STREAT
