Social Enterprise International

Social Enterprise International Ltd are the founders of the social enterprise movement in the UK and have worked in over 40 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. We have two areas of expertise - business and education - and our belief is that they are best when they have a social purpose, apply values, ethics and are run collaboratively and collectively. We also work for the redistribution of wealth through progressive enterprises, both in business and setting them up in schools and the community.

Education
SEi has a long history of working with primary and secondary schools. In the 2000s we worked with CAN to bring social enterprise into the new Academies and together with CAN we wrote and published a book called Learning by Doing targeted at teachers and youth workers. In the Horizon 2020 project called NEMESIS (Novel Educational Model Enabling Social Innovation Skills) we led teacher training, sustainablity and exploitation. NEMESIS developed the philosophy and theoretical framework behind an innovative educational model called Social Innovation Education (SIE). The project is aimed at 6 - 17 year old children and had two rigorous pilot phases to ensure the model was tried and tested. We are now a partner in an Erasmus+ project called ChangeShaping Schools where we are scaling SIE in Serbia, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania. We are also the Project Coordinator of an Erasmus+ project called Creatives Academy, where we are helping the Creative and Cultural Sector recover from covid through providing an innovative creative entrprepreurial framework and curriculum for students, educators and Creatives. We have also worked with schools in Indonesia; a two year project with 50 Islamic schools and Uganda – a number of short courses for head teachers that reached out to 60 schools.

Business
Our work is in developing new models of enterprise, notably recently the FairShares model and wealth sharing models. We have helped set up the FairShares Institute and FairShares Association and based on a successful Erasmus+ project are working with partners to set up FairShares Labs in the UK, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, the Netherlands and Nigeria. We are working with other partners in Italy, Poland and Greece to set up a new European network of Social Economy (ESEN) and we are setting up two new Social Enterprise Academies in London and Lagos.

We are democratically managed, governed by a Board of Directors based in the UK, France, Germany, Nigeria, Panama and Indonesia. We have a large team of Associates based in four continents and we have Social Licences with organisations and companies based in the UK, Croatia, France and Nigeria. We are planning to open a second office in Ireland this year.