This week I have been attending a conference on “Boosting Social Enterprises in Europe”, which has been held by the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union.
Social Enterprise is very current in the European scene with many seeing the enlargement of social entrepreneurship as a major contribution to addressing poverty and social exclusion in Europe and to some extent creating much needed jobs. There was also much discussion on what sort of social enterprises are attractive to private investors. This is all very good in theory, but the reality is that much of this discussion equates social entrepreneurship with new organisations or people and, perhaps more worrying, can miss the need to ensure sustainable, long term social change. There are of course really excellent new organisations and individuals engaged in life changing sustainable social entrepreneurship, but what I stressed in the panel I was invited to speak on was that Eurodiaconia members may be long established organisations and churches but they are among some of the most innovative and enterprising organisations around.
Our members’ lengthy experience in caring for and empowering people across the life cycle and in all sorts of social situations means that we can see what does and what does not work and where there is a real need for new thinking and approaches. That being said, we also recognise that sometimes our ability to be innovative and entrepreneurial can be hampered by a lack of resources. Hopefully the strong outcomes of this conference will go some way to removing such barriers for all social economy actors.
Yet, not everything can be solved by the social economy… this week I also spoke with a member of the European Parliament who wanted to discuss poverty and rising household costs and we also held a seminar with our Czech members on how to get more involved in the European Semester and the Europe 2020 process. Rising household costs such as energy poverty are symptomatic of wider structural failings where people just do not have enough money to meet their basic needs. This will not be addressed by any project, but by a re-adjustment of social and economic priorities in processes such as the European semester.
We need to be active in all of these discussions and we need to recognise where and how the best changes and solutions can be found – not jump on what seems “new” and “attractive” to funders. At Eurodiaconia we will keep trying to find the balance in this new landscape.
Have a good weekend,
Heather Roy