This is a unique event in the North West, run for and by social entrepreneurs. The preparatory sessions will cover common pitfalls such as how to structure your presentation, how to understand the psychology of investors and how to support this with the right documents.

Up to 5 social leaders will be chosen from the preparatory session to go into a live Pitching In session at the Action for Social Enterprise event on 25th November where they could win one of two marketing packages worth £2,500 as well as pitch their ideas to experts and representatives from investment companies.

Over two days of the event delegates will also have the chance to get stuck into a range of workshops, talks and games that will inspire, challenge and provoke new ideas. The Growth Zone offers the chance to learn new skills in 14 enterprise workshops, focusing on both business and personal development, from starting up to financing your enterprise. Run by cross-industry experts, delegates will work on examples relevant to their social business and will be guided to key actions that can be implemented to have an immediate impact!

Be inspired in the Inspiration Zone. – hear Lord Mawson, OBE, and one of the foremost UK social entrepreneurs talk about what it takes to bring communities together and make a lasting impact. Fay Selvan, CEO of the Big Life Group, will share her successful journey to help inspire and motive you to reach your goals! And you can take part in innovative workshops such as the Big Resilience Game or the Social Media Game.

Delegates who attended last years’ Action for Social Enterprise event have seen many benefits including acquiring essential business skills, forming partnerships with other social enterprises, gaining access to support form a business post graduate and increasing the resilience of their enterprise. "If you’re serious about social enterprise, then this conference is a must attend event! Vanessa and the team are passionate about what they do and this shows through in the quality and delivery of the workshops, networking sessions and talks!" says Andrew Jervis Director, Painting Out Poverty

And it’s not just social enterprises that can benefit from Action for Social Enterprise. We all recognise business and social pressures are mounting. We have seen traditional free market models found wanting and big government deemed too expensive and ineffective in many ways. So it’s time to look at another way of making society work. It’s all about practical action and support, influencing others and developing ourselves to make this world a better place for everyone.

With the support of some of the leading practitioners and thinkers in this area there will be a day-long public sector workshop – How to make a square peg fit a round hole: creating new models for public services- to flesh out a new model for commissioning that will be fit for purpose and identify the critical success factors and essential competencies needed to deliver social services more effectively.

If you are thinking about making a difference to the world, want to get real life business experience and learn new skills or make interesting connections that can help you progress academically, personally or in the working world then Action for Social Enterprise is for you! Action for Social Enterprise: A high impact event for Global Entrepreneurship 2011.

The Social Solutions Academy only has 10 days left to find private sector leaders who are willing to sponsor a learning and development package for 20 Social Entrepreneurs.

The North West has been significantly impacted by cuts in public sector funding.  Many of the social leaders we are talking to are preparing to close fabulous community projects delivering much needed services to the most vulnerable in our society. These social entrepreneurs are brilliant at helping those most in need but many don’t have the key skills needed to run businesses – skills that they can gain quickly with the right intervention.

Your help today will benefit society as a whole well into the future! 

On the 25^th & 26^th November 2011 we are assembling 200 social leaders representing social enterprises, charities and public organisations.  Please check out our fantastic programme here and see for yourself the quality of the learning, personal development, investment, resources and networking opportunities on offer. 

Action for Social Enterprise is not a conference, not a talking shop, not a day out of the office. It is hard work for our delegates who will learn new skills, from experts working across sectors and actively work on plans to sustain and build their enterprises. Our intervention has a long lasting impact.  We know this because delegates attending our 2010 are still in business!

Social leaders understand how important learning opportunities are for them to acquire new skills and contacts to help their organisations grow.  We have found 20 budding social enterprise owners working hard to sustain great social innovation projects.  Unfortunately, they’re telling us they’d love to be at the event but simply cannot afford to attend.  We don’t want to refuse this fantastic opportunity to those most in need. 

As a start-up social enterprise ourselves (established in 2009) we cannot afford to wavier the fees of financially vulnerable organisations.   We have received no grants over the last 2 years to deliver our unique brand of business support.  We have already significantly subsidised the event to keep ticket prices low.  Despite our own challenges since 2009 a small dedicated team has successfully delivered learning events to over 400 social entrepreneurs and public sector representatives.

We are passionate about encouraging young people and adults to learn new skills.  This is our 3^rd year of working in partnership with the University of Manchester to deliver our trademark Action for Social Enterprise event.  In doing so, we will develop the learning needs of the next generation of social entrepreneurs. 

What are we asking you to do?

We would like you to “sponsor” the cost of a one or two day ticket for one or more social entrepreneurs.

The cost of the ticket to this high quality learning event is £125.00 for one day and £190.00 for two days.

How will your support be recognised?

As a supporter of one of the 20 social enterprise Learning Development packages you will be listed in our annual year book, on our website and within our No nonsense Guide to Social Enterprise. You can also of course promote your support as part of your Corporate Social Responsibility.   

You will also receive a progress report on how the social entrepreneur has implemented the skills they’ve learnt at the event.

If you are in a position to help an aspiring social entrepreneur sharpen their business skills please contact Vanessa Augustus vanessa@socialsolutionsacademy.co.uk or call 07846 810 280 TODAY!

Vanessa Augustus, Head of Innovation & Partnerships will be a panellist for the Beacons for Public Engagement Recognition Awards Panel 2011.

The awards aim:

• To recognise mutually beneficially community-university partnerships making a difference to Greater Manchester
• To support new, emerging and existing community-university partnerships to improve their sustainability and development through a small award
• To identify examples of good practice and share learning with wider networks

The panel will review 27 applications to the Recognition Awards across three categories:

•       New
•       Emerging and
•       Established partnerships

The Panel’s shortlist will then be compiled and final award recommendations agreed at the Panel meeting on Wednesday 16^th November 2011.   The awards will be presented by Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, The President and Vice Chancellor of The University of Manchester, Professor Gerry Kelleher, The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Strategic Planning) of Manchester Metropolitan University and Keith Barnes, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Strategic Partnerships.

The Social Solutions Academy will also be a Market Place at the Summit at lunchtime (12.30 – 13.45) on Thursday 17^th November.  Please register for the Summit here: http://manchestersummit2011.eventbrite.com

Amalakin is representing the Social Solutions Academy to help one of our new members Emerge Recycling raise funds for FareShare Northwest, our regional food redistribution programme helping people in need.

If you'd like to make a donation or sponsor our team (Social Solutions Academy) please email info@socialsolutionsacademy.co.uk with your sponsorship pledge. You can send us a cheq for 'FareShare North West' to our office, 47 Minshull House, Chorlton Street, M1 3FY or bring cash to our last Intelligent Networking event (before summer break) Thursday 28th July. Alternatively, if it's easier, please use (add your name and SSA Network for recognition purposes – though note, Every Click charge 50p per transaction to http://www.everyclick.com/faresharenorthwest

FairShare need to raise over £100,000 each year to coordinate deliveries, run a food depot and delivery van which is why we need your help to raise as much as you possibly can to help keep the project running. We really appreciate your support. Many thanks, Vanessa & the Social Solutions Academy Team

After receiving her nomination from SSA Member Lisa Rossetti, Positive Lives, Vanessa said "I am truly honored other people think our work is making a difference. Like many others my journey as an aspiring social entrepreneur has not been easy. We are incredibly excited about the attending this remarkable event.  This recognition is great a boost for our team”.

The ceremony will take place on 20th May 2011 in the elegant surroundings of The Midland Hotel, Manchester. BBC Radio Manchester will be broadcasting live from the event.

The Inspiring Women Awards were founded in 1992 to raise funds for the research charity Tommy’s Campaign, which was also launched that year. More information about the awards are listed here.

We delivered our first successful Social Enterprise Action Day (SEAD) on 18th November 2010. The high quality learning event attracted a range of new and established social enterprises from the North West.

"The 'Winning public contracts' session very good, I was very impressed with content. The facilitator had undertaken some research about my social enterprise prior to the event and found a relevant funding opportunity. This was used as a case study during the session".

Rose Marley, Director, Motiv CIC

The day was not just about social entrepreneurs’ public sector commissioners also had an opportunity to meet social entrepreneurs and learn from each other. The attendance from the public sector was a key to the success of SEAD as improving relationships with commissioners will become and increasing priority for social enterprises.

Core activities included:

• Training on effective networking by private sector leaders
• 6 practical enterprise growth workshops moving from “Ideas generation” to “Scaling up” run by cross-industry experts
• A toolkit, following the 5 growth themes, explored in the workshops that can be implemented post action day
• A commissioners work-stream focussing on intelligent commissioning
• A social innovation panel – comprising commissioners, social entrepreneurs, private sector and academics. The panel will look at unemployment for 2 deprived neighbourhoods in Manchester with the focus on how social enterprise can deliver the service solution
• A Question and Answer session for Community Interest Companies (CICs) led by the CIC Regulator Sara Bugress

"Vanessa was a key presenter at our very first Social Enterprise Symposium at the university producing at fairly short notice an excellent presentation that was both informative and interesting. Following an expression of my desire to make the event bigger and better next year, Vanessa went from presenter to partner. We are know working hard to make that happen. Vanessa's drive and list of contacts is proving invaluable and I have no doubt that the conference in November 2010 will be a fantastic success for all concerned".

Dr Martin Henery, Programme Director – MSc.Enterprise, Manchester Enterprise Centre

The live discussion is scheduled for Thursday 21st of April, 1-3pm.

Do not miss out if you’re interested in catching up on a conversation on social leadership for social enterprises. People will be posting questions throughout the session you can join in the discussion by clicking here.

His key message was that in order to grow as a leader you have to say “I don’t know” and seek the help of others. This master class was part of the programme of events run by the Social Solutions Academy, which provides training and development opportunities to support social enterprise across the North West.

Vanessa Augustus, Founder of the Social Solutions Academy says “At a time when so many people are facing an uncertain future in the jobs market we are seeing a growth in people considering social entrepreneurship as a way of making a living and giving back to society. Many of these new entrepreneurs need to develop some of their skills and as a premier provider of practical learning tools for social entrepreneurs it’s a real coup for Manchester to have Professor Barker working with us in delivering this seminar.”

Professor Barker, who spent many years working alongside Professor Reg Revans, the founding father of the action learning movement, was delighted to deliver the workshop, saying “It has been a pleasure working with Social Solutions Academy and social entrepreneurs in this way. I believe strongly that in order to grow as an individual leader or as a business you need to realise what you don’t know. Action Learning is a powerful technique to explore and develop solutions with others.” After a positive response from the seminar Professor Barker has agreed to run the sessions again where delegates can learn what genuine action learning is and how it works and how action learning will help create a learning organisation. Any one interested can call 0845 468 2126 to find out more.