Tag: social entrepreneurship

Ground Up: Local workshop on SE indicators

14 April

As part of the EU Erasmus Plus Programme called “Ground Up: Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Resilient Cities”, Belle and Co. designed and delivered a 1 hour local workshop for Social Enterprises in South Africa. The response was overwhelming with 50 RSVPs streaming in, curious to know more about the project,

The project outcome: A set of indicators to measure the health of the Social Enterprise Ecosystem.
Number of partners countries involved: 11 Partners (North Macedonia, Costa Rica, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland, Denmark, Ecuador, Serbia and Peru)
Number of months: 18 month project (Jan 2022 – until July 2023)

A project of this nature is inherently tricky, as it is trying to capture a set of mainly quantitative indicators to measure how well supported the Social Enterprise Ecosystem is in a given local (city, region, nation).

The 4 pillars the project focused on include:

  • Human Capital
  • Funding and Finance
  • Support Systems
  • Quality of Life

The local workshop, held on the 14 April 2023, was to showcase the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Assessment Tool that the SA team had developed so far and the data sources they had managed to find. It was also an opportunity for the ecosystem themselves to validate or dispute the tool and its sources.

WORKSHOP VIDEO

If you missed this session, you can view the whole workshop video here:

Lifechoices: Financial Literacy Hackathon

18, 19, 25, 26 January 2023

Introduction

For the fourth year in a row, Belle and Co was asked to design and deliver a design-thinking workshop for Lifechoice’s Coding Academy students. This time, the ask was to design a competitive Hackathon-style training, focused on a specific theme, identified by the Academy as essential for learners: Financial Literacy.

What is a hackathon?

The word hackathon is a portmanteau of the words “hacker”, which means “clever programmer”, and “marathon”, an event marked by endurance. The concept of the hackathon, also called a hack day or hack fest, was born out of the open source (tech) community who would come together for about 24 hours to develop new software and applications. Nowadays it is used as a design-thinking methodology for all sorts of communities not only in tech.

Why does creativity thrive under constraints? 

A  study on creativity and constraint demonstrates that surprisingly when options are limited, people generate more, rather than less, varied solutions. When faced with scarcity, research shows that people must give themselves the freedom to use resources in less conventional ways. (Forbes.com)

Thus, the hackathon concept is a great way to simulate a time-constrained environment driven by either competition or collaboration to creatively solve problems through innovative or lateral thinking.

Lifechoices Hackathon method

For Lifechoices, we have chosen the competition-based hackathon, whereby teams are encouraged to come up with viable tech-based solutions to an aspect of the problem of Financial Literacy, using their coding knowledge, additional research and their inherent group ingenuity. The winning team receives a prize and recognition of some sort in front of an audience.

Learning objectives are to:

  • Stimulate creativity, innovation and solution-based thinking;
  • Learn how to work as a team and come up with tech-based products or services;
  • Understand more deeply certain aspects of Financial Literacy;
  • Embrace the VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world by enhancing capacities for creative problem-solving.
  • Practise building a tech-based solution and pitching in front of an audience.

A hackathon can be conducted in a variety of ways, using a number of activities or design-thinking methods including brainstorming, world cafe, bar camp, pitches.

All the teams were excellent, designing prototypes (some on paper, others coded and already working MVPs) focusing on the following Financial Literacy topics: Budget, Debt, Credit Score, and Savings.

VIDEO: Winning Team, receiving their prize.

Creative Enterprise E-Learning

December 2021

In January 2021, the British Council, appointed Belle and Co. and its supplier consortium (Made Culture, Nigeria and Heva Fund, Kenya), supported by UK partner University of Arts London, to expand its digital programme delivery and to this end, commissioned a suite of e-learning courses, to support young people in the development of their knowledge in creative entrepreneurship.

Over the next 4 months, Belle and Co. and its consortium, were in charge of developing:

  • Module 1: Launching your Creative Enterprise
  • Module 2: Growing your Creative Enterprise

A further Module 3 on Impact Entrepreneurship and Module 4 on Creative Economy Policy, were designed by another service provider.

Module 1: Launching your Creative Enterprise

This entry-level module consists of 5 courses comprising of a total of 50-60 lessons.
Each course should take the learner 2,5 hours to complete. Which means, Module 1 should take around 12 hours to complete.

Module 2: Growing your Creative Enterprise

This intermediate level module consists of 7 courses comprising a total of around 70-80 lessons.
Each course should take the learner 2,5 hours to complete. Which means, Module 2 should take around 17 hours to complete.

A mixed media approach was used including video case studies, interviews, PDFs, PPTs, Worksheets, and Quizzes.

Click through the carousel to see what the courses look like online:

Each Course starts with a welcome video by the Course facilitator. In this case, Malaika Toyo (Made Culture), is introducing Module 1: Course 3 on Marketing and Branding.

A variety of Video Case Studies were produced from across the continent. Pictured here is an entrepreneur from Egypt, and an Entrepreneur from Rwanda.

Some Video case studies take the form of an interview. Pictured here is an Entrepreneur from South Africa being interviewed by one of our facilitators.

Should you be interested in signing up, visit: https://communitytraining.britishcouncil.org and sign up for free!

To help you decide, here are the course summaries (cheat sheets) of each course below:

COURSE SUMMARIES OF MODULE 1: Launching Your Creative Enterprise

Basic-Crs-1-Summary-African-Creative-EconomyDownload
Basic-Crs-2-Summary-Bringing-Your-Idea-to-LifeDownload
Basic-Crs-3-Summary-Finding-the-Right-PeopleDownload
Basic-Crs-4-Summary-Building-Your-BusinessDownload
Basic-Crs-5-Summary-Branding-and-MarketingDownload

COURSE SUMMARIES OF MODULE 2: Growing Your Creative Enterprise

Intermediate-Crs-1-Summary-Entrepreneurship-JourneyDownload
Intermediate-Crs-2-Summary-Your-Growth-JourneyDownload
Intermediate-Crs-3-Summary-Protecting-My-BusinessDownload
Intermediate-Crs-4-Summary-Finance-for-CreativeDownload
Intermediate-Crs-5-Leading-Self-and-Teams-Summary-1Download
Intermediate-Crs-6-Raising-Capital-for-BusinessDownload
Intermediate-Crs7-Summary-Promoting-and-PitchingDownload

Activating Ecosystem Change!

Belle and Co. was invited as guest speaker and facilitator to open the #SwitchSeminar in Johannesburg over the weekend of the 13th October as part of the Switch Social Entrepreneurship Programme (SSEP). The seventy (70) participants included both current as well as alumni “Switchers” from all over South Africa. The seminar took place at Workshop 17 in Maboneng district, Johannesburg over two days.

Belisa Rodrigues, Director of Belle and Co., gets ready to present at #SwitchSeminar.

The #SwitchSeminar topic “Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in South Africa”, was also the topic of Belle and Co.’s 2-part session. The first session was an interactive presentation looking at what makes up an ecosystem including elements such as funding and finance, infrastructure, policy, regulation, networking, incubators, training, media, academic, consultants. And then it was time for the switchers to build their own ecosystems using creative means such as the Solar System or the the Human Body.

In groups, switchers had to visualise their own ecosystems, the stakeholders, gaps and how they fit into the puzzle. At the end of the seminar, during reflection time, one Switcher said that this exercise inspired and made him rethink his entire business model and internal ecosystem.

(SSEP is run by Activate Change Drivers and is part of a larger 11-month course for carefully-selected aspiring social entrepreneurs.The SSE programme helps participants nurture the development of strong social businesses, helping them to proceed from an idea to business incubation or the start-up of their initiative. See more here.)