For SEF’s Enterprise Development Pack – contact info@wearegrowing.org

Probably the most famous example of social enterprise is Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’s micro-credit enterprise Grameen Bank. In essence, a social enterprise is one that pursues financial sustainability in the traditional enterprise sense but has a social cause as its central mission. The Siyakhula Computer School model does much the same (albeit currently on a far smaller scale) by providing affordable, accessible and high quality end-user computer literacy training through establishing a sustainable social enterprise.

A social enterprise falls very much within the enterprise development category of the B-BBEE scorecards. The opportunity exists for SEF to support the broader enterprise development objectives of the corporate sector by replicating the social business model of the computer school in other impoverished communities. In fact, SEF’s social enterprise venture is so efficient and so cost-effective that by the end of the 3 year start up phase the computer school will have conducted computer literacy training for approximately 700 students and established a sustainable enterprise in the process at an effective cost of half the going market rate for straight end user computer literacy training.

It’s hard to argue with these figures. Contact info@wearegrowing.org for more.

Social Enterprise is a phenomenon sweeping the globe, the next World Social Enterprise Forum is to be held at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa in April 2011. Participants from this conference will be visiting the computer school as an example of an emerging South African social enterprise. In the UK alone, there are currently 62 000 social enterprises.