Social Enterprise Day

Social Enterprise Day - 19th November 2009

The purpose of this day is to encourage people to use enterprising ideas for social and environmental change. A social enterprise is a business with primarily social or environmental aims, and whose profits are ploughed back into the business or community. E.g. The Eden Project.

Speakers:

Richard Litchfield, CEO Eastside Consulting

Eastside was founded by two former corporate financiers, Richard Litchfield and Holger Westphely, on the convictions that entrepreneurship and market approaches can contribute to solving the big issues we face in society, such as poverty, homelessness and climate change.Richard's expertise is focused on working with private business and third sector organisations on raising investment and growth. Richard worked in the City for Williams de Broe, and then in corporate finance at Salomon Smith Barney (now Citigroup) focusing on technology IPOs. After leaving the City in 2001, he travelled in South America for a year, and returned to London as a business advisor and part-time journalist before setting-up Eastside in 2004. He holds a BA from Cambridge in Classics.

John Montague, CEO The TREES Group

The TREES Group exists to support the self-contained businesses that operate in a range of commercial and social sectors - from conferences and construction to landscape gardening.TREES has created a surplus each year since it was founded, which have been used to provide loans to TREES' subsidiary social enterprises for use as working capital and to support communities in need. John originally trained as an engineer and has worked in the building industry for more than 25 years. John started his career at the Kier Group working on construction projects across the country. He then spent 10 years with John Mowlem plc, managing an annual construction turnover of £30 million, mostly in the area of social housing.

Andres Falconer, Director Ashoka UK

Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Since 1981, they have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries. Before joining Ashoka in 2007, Andres was the Executive Director of ABDL, a Brazilian NGO affiliated to the LEAD International network, and co-founded and managed CEATS, the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship of the University of Sao Paulo. Andres holds a Masters Degree in Management and was a Fellow of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he lived most of his life in Brazil before coming to London.

Stuart Thomson
from UnLtd (www.unltd.org.uk)

Programme