South Africa Workshop for Social Entrepreneurship - 2008/Reflections/Prioritisation

Group Discussions: Observations, Insights and Inspirational Factors - Report back and Prioritisation

Facilitator: Kim Tucker, Meraka Institute

Overall findings of the groups

Observations, insights and inspirational factors:

• There needs to be better leadership within social entrepreneurship projects
• Student involvement in projects is primarily because of obligation, not desire
• Students don’t have high levels of emotional ownership of projects
• How can students be incentivised to get involved in social entrepreneurship
• Stronger links must be established between “fossil fuels” (those with many years experience/academia) students and communities.
• Brief students correctly on the projects being undertaken – they must know their role in the community
• The needs of a community is the well-spring of entrepreneurship
• Students will get involved if they earn degree credits from their efforts in social entrepreneurship
• Ensure that projects are demand driven – let the community tell the students what it is that they required.
• Networking is vital. Successful organisations have at their disposal a network of people, resources and ideas into which they can tap.
• There must processes put in place for the monitoring and evaluation of projects in order to determine successes and failures.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel: there is good work being done and successful projects in place – build on these successes and expand their implementation.
• Community needs are always changing and evolving. Student social entrepreneurship must move in tandem with these changes.
• Use and teach technology in order to increase the sustainability of projects.
• Social entrepreneurs are change agents in the social sector.
• Students must adopt projects with a view to creating a sustainable social value – add value whilst creating value
• Universities and students must not allow a lack of funding to limit their involvement – act boldly.

“Out of the new community come the new leaders who will in turn change the community”

Conclusion

Although people are inspired by the motivation of individual students from universities working in communities and the subsequent transfer of knowledge, experiences and skills most students are actually working in communities through obligation and not through a desire to make a difference. Furthermore, the students reported that there is very little support from the upper echelons of university leadership for the projects being undertaken.

Again the issue of demand driven projects came to the fore and a possible solution would be to do needs assessments within communities to determine the demand for specific projects. Coupled with this is the need for a shared vision: the vision of the students must dovetail in with that of the community.

Continuity was also identified as being a priority. Students start on a project, leave the university and the project falters or stops altogether. Long-term engagements with communities are vital, despite the changing student contingent. Coupled with this is the matching of skills with needs. Efforts between universities and communities must be co-ordinated to ensure that there is maximum collaboration across all university departments, students and communities to ensure that the correct skills are brought to a specific project.

Social entrepreneurship is a mixture of the private sector and the community with the common goal of finding solutions to problems. Such solutions could then be expanded from local areas of focus to national and regional areas.