Celebrating Graduation 2018

This year celebrates another successful year of the School for Social Entrepreneurs in Hampshire: The list of social/environmental issues that this year’s cohort of students have set up enterprises to address reads like a list of some of the most pressing issues of our time – dementia, depression, homelessness, young people in care, mental health, recycling and others. But make no mistake, these are entrepreneurs and like other social entrepreneurs they will:

• Create jobs (41% of social enterprises created jobs in the past 12 months; more than half of those have created jobs for the most disadvantaged in the labour market)
• Probably break even or make a profit (76% of social enterprises surveyed by
Social Enterprise UK last year did)
• Have a more diverse leadership than traditional business
• Operate in many of the most economically disadvantaged areas
• Pay fairly (the average pay ratio between social enterprise CEO pay and the lowest
paid is just 3.6:1 – for FTSE 100 CEOs, it is more than 150:1).

They also want to run successful businesses; SSE students want people to buy from them firstly, because they have fantastic products and services and secondly, because their business supports a social or environmental cause. If you are reading this forward, please consider buying from them!

We remain grateful to Lloyds Bank for their long term financial and mentoring support. Our thanks also go to the Big Lottery Fund for the student grants; to the speakers and witnesses who have so generously given their time and experience to our students; to our now trusted team of assessors, interviewers and Action Learning Set facilitators. My thanks to the board of Action Hampshire for continuing to believe in and to help fund this programme. As with last year, my thanks to Fiona & Sandie who make it all happen and who are completely focused on making this programme the best that it can be.