A blog by Keith, on behalf of the whole Social Enterprise team.
Set in an old pub in the heart of Southampton, Board in The City CIC is a gaming café that takes great pride in their all-inclusive culture and extensive outreach work. Part of this outreach work was to host a social enterprise awareness day on August 16th which we (the amazing enterprise team) were delighted to be invited to.
Having never been to the café I had no real expectations of how the day was going to go or how many people may attend if any as the rain had returned that Tuesday after many long weeks of sunshine.
Arriving at Board in the City you can’t get away from the fact that it’s an old school pub with exterior wood panelling, large Victorian windows and of course the iconic British pub sign and bar. You get the impression that the building has many great stories and anecdotes to tell!
Having been welcomed in and shown to our presentation table, we got set up and we inquisitively, some would say nosily eyed up the other tables and social entrepreneurs. BITC have done really well in making the space inclusive and welcoming for all, including children which was evident by the numerous “kids” board games. It was also great to see retro games from my childhood as well as games I had never heard of which made me want to return to the café to try some of them out!
The biggest challenge social entrepreneurs have is “raising awareness” of social enterprise as a business model and making it attractive enough for more businesses to adopt.
Raising Awareness
So what does “raising awareness” look like and what constitutes a result – is it that more people know what a social enterprise is, or that more people buy from social enterprises or is it that more businesses buy from social enterprises or is it that more people set up social enterprises – I’m a fan of the latter as my passion is supporting start-ups and seeing them grow and deliver impact but it’s not about me 😊
Being involved in social entrepreneurship and running projects and enterprises for the last 8 years I probably have a one-sided view of being a social entrepreneur – why wouldn’t you want to promote social or environmental change? But also, being a realist I’m fully aware the world doesn’t work like that.
Hosted by Dais, the disability service and support organisation and Board in The City this event would be another opportunity to tell people why social enterprises could change the world, how they can get involved and a great opportunity to be in a room of likeminded people.
The stalls in our immediate vicinity were The Minstead Trust, Touch CIC who bring people together through storytelling, Nagina Kaleem from Cross Culture Hub, available via this link, who brings women together through sewing workshops as well as many others spread throughout the space. It was interesting to note how many of the social entrepreneurs had been through Action Hampshire programs including The School of Social Entrepreneurs and Inspiring Enterprise program.
It was great to see representatives from Southampton City Council there who had a flip chart at their table with one question written on it “What do you need from us?”. We took this opportunity to add a few post-it notes to the chart and hopefully they took away some good suggestions and advice.
Our motives for attending the event were to obviously promote and raise awareness of social entrepreneurship but to also promote the programs we are currently working on.
So… What are we Working On?
Action Hampshire will soon be launching its Accelerating Women’s Enterprise (AWE) programme, available via this link, which will support women to gain the skills and knowledge to develop their own social enterprise. Please see below links if you or anyone you may know might be interested in joining this program. It is a great opportunity for women who would like to set up their own business or community project, access support and training as well as receive 1-2-1 mentoring from women with experience in the sector.
We really enjoyed our day out from the office at Board in The City, our team came back “buzzing” and we would definitely come back again!
