Learning and Collaboration Opportunities.. Meeting with our European and Hong Kong Colleagues
Over the Christmas and New Year break we met with some inspiring leaders in the social impact venture and impact investment space across Germany, the Baltic states, and Hong Kong. We found a vibrant network of incubation and development hubs, built by dedicated and talented people who believe in the spirit of sharing and collaboration. Our sharing and learning with our new friends will guide our Impact Seed journey in Western Australia through 2018 to leverage our collective impact.
Social Impact Lab & Social Enterprise Network of Deutschland (Frankfurt, Germany)
Social Impact Lab is the incubator for social startups in Frankfurt. They support social entrepreneurs with 2 x 8-month incubator programs supporting them through founding and developing their social businesses. They also have an awesome collaboration space 'knitted' into the incubator model, run by their Community Manager - Christine Braun, who we caught up with recently. The Social Impact Lab network now extends to 8 cities across Germany after starting in 1989 (yes, 1989!) in Berlin. Frankfurt opened in 2014 and has worked with 84 changemakers to date. Two of the Frankfurt Lab's incubation leaders, Michael Wunsch and Birgit Heilig are also leaders of 'Social Enterprise Network Deutschland' - a capacity building think tank driving social enterprise through it's affiliation with the national startup association (Bundesverband Deutsche Startups)
Impact Hub (Dresden, Germany)
Just down the road from Berlin - Germany's epicentre of social impact-ivity, is Dresden, a stunning city, and one that's a little more conservative politically..a bit like Perth we reckon. So when we caught up with Julian von Gebhardi, CEO and Co Founder of Impact Hub Dresden, we were looking forward to swapping notes on growing social business in this setting and hearing Julian's story.
Julian founded his own online marketplace for sustainable products a few years ago, and wanted to work with other like minded people. At the time, Dresden didn't have a hub for social entrepreneurs..so he set up his own!
Today Impact Hub Dresden is his sole focus, and under Julian and his two co founders' stewardship, this amazing place has evolved, uniquely designed to inspire community building and co-design, supporting over 100 startups and many more events and gatherings.
Importantly, Impact Hub Dresden, as a for-profit entity that supports social changemakers, is itself an impact business. In leading by example, they have already made great inroads in the region's corporate and foundation sectors, with a number of companies seeing the social change light and supporting the mission of Impact Hub Dresden.
It was great to hear Julian's story, and see another example of what a small, dedicated team can do in a relatively short space of time to build a cohesive, mission-driven, social enterprise community - one that is inspiring change more broadly in a city towards social innovation, social business and impact investment.
Social Enterprise Association of Latvia, and New Door (Riga, Latvia)
As 2018 rolled around, we rolled into Riga, and were lucky enough to catch up with two of Latvia's leaders in social entrepreneurship, Madara Ūlande - Founding Executive Director of Social Entrepreneurship Association of Latvia (SEAL); and Diana Lapkis - Co Founder and Director of New Door, Latvia's Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator.
These two organisations have been working hand in hand for the past few years in developing Latvia's social enterprise ecosystem from the ground up.
With the founding financial support of several institutions together with a team of facilitators and mentors, New Door now count 40 social entrepreneurs among the alumni of their accelerator program, and have partnered in several exchanges, notably the Start Tel Aviv 2017 program.
Under Madara's stewardship, SEAL now have 72 social enterprise members, and have been instrumental in the 2017 establishment of Latvia's first social enterprise incorporation laws.
Unlike Australia, many EU jurisdictions, including Latvia have restrictions on non-profit entities trading. Also, for profit companies can't mandate social impact as a fiduciary duty on par with investor returns (note: this is something we're still coming to terms with in Australia's own Corporations Law).
It was great to learn more about the rapidly emerging social enterprise and impact investment ecosystem that both Newdoor Riga and SEAL (socialauznemejdarbiba.lv) are building in Latvia.. and we're looking forward to building our exchange and collaboration framework through 2018.
Estonia Social Enterprise Network (Tallin, Estonia)
Estonia is often coined the Silicon Valley of Europe. Not only do Estonia’s tech alumni include names such as Skype, Transferwise, Pipedrive and Cloutex; but the country has created a digital system that means information can easily be shared between organisations across the private and public sectors, where around 99% of government services are digital.
With this in mind, and with an eye to knitting tech and social startup scenes together, it was great to meet with Jaan Aps, Chair of the Estonian Social Enterprise Network.
The Estonian Social Enterprise Network was founded in 2012, and it has done an inspiring job of advocacy and development (being one of the government’s three civil society partners). It fosters social procurement and social enterprise development policies, and runs a number of incubation and development programs with over 50 members.
With so many shared experiences in the impact and tech startup scene, we naturally also have some awesome opportunities for collaboration and exchange, especially when it comes to drawing together tech and social impact in our respective ecosystems.
Social Ventures Hong Kong & Good Lab
Social Ventures Hong Kong have been building the local social innovation and enterprise ecosystem since 2007. Although they face similar challenges as we do in Australia in the areas of incorporation models, advocacy and social enterprise perceptions, SVHK have made great progress with their for-profit social startups.
Focusing urban social issues, they've nurtured some fantastic success stories. Amongst them:
-Diamond Cab, providing their now 500+ members with disabilities with dedicated, safe cab services;
-Green Monday, a global platform driving viral sustainability outcomes;
- BottLess, addressing Hong Kong's 132 tonnes p/a of PET plastic waste (sound familiar Perth?); as well as
- Light Be, using underutilised properties, which now provides 300+ families affordable housing and social support.
SVHK takes a hands-on, sleeves rolled up approach to identifying and developing its impact ventures from ideation to incubation and finally investment and management, with over 20 portfolio ventures.
Their regional capacity building/exchange partnerships extend to Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand through the Asia Social Innovation Award.
We also chatted with Kelvin Cheung, COO of Good Lab, Hong Kong. This piece on Hong Kong's Goodlab describes their work better than we can.. in short, a focus on tri-sector collaboration and leveraging government's own internal social innovation agenda (yes, the Hong Kong govt has one!) towards growing systems change. This was another fantastic meeting on our journey to identify where we can learn and where we can collaborate
It was great to meet with Good Lab's Kelvin Cheung and SVHK's Associate Director, Investment, Lehui Liang and we're looking forward to exploring opportunities to work together.
In 2018, ImpactSeed will focus our attention on leveraging the demand-side through advocating for social procurement, matching social enterprises with both impact investors and potential NFP co-investment, and supporting the growth of the innovative social impact ventures in WA through our Community Innovation Program. We are also very excited for the opportunity to build an exchange and collaboration framework with our international colleagues.
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