SiiWA

Spacecubed hosts Young Public Service Leaders

Claire — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:31:15 +0000

A group of Young Public Service Leaders were lucky enough to have a first look at Spacecubed mid construction and hear about some of the great organisations and individuals that will be working in the space. The group had a complete tour of the space, and were able to ask any questions to the SiiWA team, before heading to the Supreme Court Gardens to hear a presentation from Brodie McCulloch, ‘Deliberately Co-creating Western Australia’s Future’.

During the presentation, Brodie highlighted that Western Australia is experiencing rapid growth which provides enormous opportunity to position the State as a global leader in a range of industries and sectors. But, as a state, we need to understand what the vision for the future is, where we will get it from. How we want Western Australia to be recognised in 30 years time. The group were able to ask Brodie questions, and how Spacecubed will be able to allow for this vision to be realised and achieved.

“Community, Business, Not for Profit and Government need to be working to co-design, co-create and co-deliver the mechanisms, organisations and systems that are going to meet growing demands and deliberately build a Western Australia we want to see…let’s get started now.” – Brodie McCulloch

After the presentation, the group were able to move on to Helvetica, for a chance to mingle and enjoy a drink and nibbles together. The event was organised by Institute of Public Administration Australia and we thank them for their hard work in making it happen.

Mapping the West Australian Social Enterprise Sector

Claire — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:20:30 +0000

SiiWA are excited to announce a new initiative with Social Traders designed to help put WA well and truly on the social enterprise map. Over the past year SiiWA has represented WA at numerous interstate social enterprise forums and functions one of the rather alarming but popular misconceptions that we encounter from our colleagues is “I guess there’s not a lot happening over there in WA”, SiiWA would like to challenge this by identifying and registering the West Australian social enterprise sector in order to rightfully fly the flag for all the great social businesses that exist across our state.

It is SiiWA’s belief that not only does Western Australia have a great diversity of established and new social enterprise operators but we also have some the most sustainable and successful in the whole of Australia. Many West Australian social entrepreneur practitioners do not identify with the term “Social Entrepreneur” or consider themselves to be in the “Social Enterprise sector”. For many hard working West Australian’s they are simply getting down to the business of running organisations that provide support, training, employment for those disadvantaged members of their community. Its now SiiWA’s mission to find these businesses and promote them accordingly.

By partnering to map the West Australian market SiiWA & Social Traders will help to raise the profile of Social Enterprise in Western Australia by clearly identifying what businesses exist, identifying their products and services and providing full contact details via the Social Traders “Social Enterprise Finder“ tool. This tool is the first of its kind in Australia and will ultimately provide a National Directory of social enterprise products and services.

To list a social enterprise, you must meet certain criteria.In relation to the business you would like to list on the Social Enterprise Finder, tick the boxes if you agree with the statements -

	The business principally exist to provide a social, environmental or local economic benefit
	The business trades fo fulfil their mission¹
	The business derives a substantial portion of their income from trade²
	The business reinvests the majority of your profit into furthering its social mission

The business is a social enterprise

Where trade is defined as the organised exchange of goods and services, including:

monetary, non-monetary and alternative currency transactions, where these are sustained activities of an enterprise; contractual sales to governments, where there has been an open tender process ; and
trade within member-based organisations, where membership is open and voluntary or where membership serves a traditionally marginalised social group.

Operationalised as 50% or more for ventures that are more than five years from start-up, 25% or more for ventures that are three to five years from start-up, and demonstrable intention to trade for ventures that are less than two years from start-up.

To register you interest in being listed on the “Finder” please provide your details below:

2012 Echoing Green Fellowships open December 5th

Claire — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:09:04 +0000

Echoing Green is a New York based organisation that invests in standout social entrepreneurs and helps them to launch new organisations. They have invested neatly $30 million in seed funding to almost 500 social entrepreneurs and their organisations, and now are offering a fellowship to social start-ups, called the Echoing Green Fellowship. It provides up to $90 000 in capital for entrepreneurs to launch their start-ups and build capacity.

The fellowship provides a stipend of $80 000 for individuals and $90 000 for two-person partnerships, and will be paid in 4 equal instalments over two years. Recipients are invited to conferences led by organisational development experts, as well as receiving technical support and pro bono partnerships. Health insurance and a yearly professional development is also included in the fellowship. All applicants must attend training conferences throughout, with all costs covered by Echoing Green.

To apply, applicants can be a citizen of any nationality and their organisation can be based in any country, but cannot have been in operation more than two years.

“Applicants who have only worked on their organisation on a part-time basis or have yet to start the organisation are generally considered eligible,” Echoing Green says.

“Applicants must make a full-time commitment to the organisation’s development for the duration of the two-year fellowship.”

“It is expected that all selected fellows resign from their current employment to dedicate themselves fulltime to their initiatives.”

The process is highly competitive, and applicants progress through three stages, with eliminations after each phase. By the end of this process, the 2500 plus applicants will be narrowed down to between 12 and 20 applicants. The 2012 fellows will begin in July 2012.

Applications open online December 5 2011, and end January 9 2012.

Share your Social Solution on Solved

Claire — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:08:49 +0000

The Australian Centre for Social Innovation has announced their latest project, Solved, which has been launched by South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill. Solved is a nationwide search for social solutions that are working. Maybe you noticed a scheme to help local kids eat a healthy breakfast in Broome, and someone in Newcastle is searching for a way to do just that. By sharing what works, we hope social solutions can help more people across Australia.

If anyone spots a solution, or has a brilliant idea, simply add it to the solved map to be in the running to win $5000 prize pack for the best social solution that is uploaded to the website. Anyone who enters can be in the running to win a $500 donation to a social solution of their choice.

Add your favourite social solution to www.solved.org.au and they could win up to $5000 in funding to keep doing good!

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Big Society: Creating Social Energy

Claire — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:08:24 +0000

Tom Tolchard; SiiWA Project Director discussing his recent trip back to the UK and some observations about some of the changes taking place there.

I recently headed back to the UK for a few weeks. I tend to have mixed emotions every time I go back. I’ve only headed home three times in the past ten years, I have to say that I wasn’t exactly in love with England when I left for Australia, it seemed too expensive, too aggressive, too little opportunity but each time I go back I notice all the great aspects life in the UK and inevitably find myself daydreaming about what life would be like if I returned. I imagine living in the leafy suburbs, playing village cricket at the weekends, drinking warm beer and complaining endlessly about, well anything really. This thought never lasts long but it was enough to start me thinking about the state of the UK and how it’s people and government are addressing the considerable social issues, which have arisen over recent years.

During my first week back in England the government released a frightening new statistic that made me consider just how important the need is for effective social innovation thinking. Having conducted a 6 month long, national survey the UK government we’re embarrassed to report that the number of children now living below the poverty line had increased from 1:5 to a staggering 1:4. That’s one in four school children in England going to school with no breakfast in their tummies, living in houses without adequate heating, wearing school clothes that don’t fit etc…. That was the same week the government rather quietly announced the need to down grade the UK economic forecast by an additional 7% (on top of the 5 % down grade three months prior). This wasn’t quite what I’d expected to find in my old country.

In a nut shell things were bad, as someone looking from the outside in, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of understanding from the people as to how the UK citizens are collectively going to address these social ills. Some may suggest that the recent rioting and the social unrest that we have witnessed to be a byproduct of this rather gloomy reality. I have very little insight these days into the social fabric of life in England but one thing that resonates for me is that many people believe that it is “the absence of hope for many young people in England” that is manifesting itself into dysfunctional and destructive behavior (or as my good friend put it to me recently “who’s country is full of convicts now Tom?”). How does a country build hope for hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised residents and do it in a way, which does not displace the happy folk, buggered if I know but I’d love to have a go at working out some solutions?

It was with these lofty questions and concerns in mind that I decided to go and find out what the Big Society mob were up to and how if at all they were planning on stopping the rot. For those who are new to Big Society I’ll provide a quick introduction. Big Society was launched by the UK government in 2010 to act as a think tank and ideas center for bringing about positive social change. “Our aim is to champion people and organisations that are part of social change. We are a catalyst creating partnerships for the wider society and are open to everyone” (www.thebigsociety.co.uk). The thing I like about Big Society is that it is thinking on a large scale, its see’s this social unrest as an opportunity to drive best practice in social enterprise, develop scalable, exportable models and their aim is to be regarded as global “best in show” at delivering innovative social capital but by their own admission they have one hell of a long journey ahead of them.

I caught up with a representative of Big Society in Manchester and asked her to explain some of the projects she was working on. One of the Big Society projects she showed me around focused on re-energising the high street and CBD retail strips.

The City of Manchester has initiated a project where it is subsidizing 50% of the rental costs of un-occupied, prime high street locations (mainly vacant due to the huge number of independent retails who have gone out of business over the past two years as well as the consolidation of many retail chains) for new start up social enterprises which encourage skills acquisition, training and employment opportunities for long term unemployed. This means that socially driven organisations, which seek to trade in order to sustain themselves, stand along side the likes of Tesco, Top Shop and Marks and Spencer but also ensure that property which has high trading potential is utilized rather that sitting vacant.

The high street has been seen as a social focal point for centuries and there is evidence linking the deterioration of high street communities to a direct correlation in dysfunctional behavior. By taking an empty retail space (which is a symbol of failure in the community) and turning it into a supported and subsidized social venture it becomes an asset to the community. This is just one example of how Big Society are throwing out the rule book and using social innovation create hope for people in England.

So what can we the residents of Western Australia learn from the Big Society initiative, a few suggestions I’ve been mulling over include the following. It would be benificial for all to create social welfare systems designed with and not for the disadvantaged people of Perth, empowering and including them as our primary stakeholder. Perth could also seek to use some of the hundreds of thousands of square meters of vacant prime CBD real estate to facilitate the rise of new social enterprise and hybrid models (a project that City of Perth has started to map vacant spaces in the CBD). I’d also like to champion the emergence of commercial social investment, in the USA the socially responsible investment market is now valued at $3.07 trillion. Its important for us to shift our thinking away from subsidiary or loss making social investment to a belief that social investment can produce positive returns both in economic and social measures.

Big Society thinking was reinforces the view that its often the guy on the street that is close to the real issues and who has huge value to add when designing social solutions. It’s also a great example of hand up not hand out where risk is shared but equally so are the rewards. For more info and a nosey through their work check out www.thebigsociety.co.uk

Westpac Catalyst Grant Launched

Claire — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:40:15 +0000

The Westpac Foundation has announced the release of a new grant category, The Catalyst Grant, which will award up to eight grants. Applications close Friday, 25 February 2012.

This grant of $50 000 aims to support an existing social enterprise or initiative within a not-for-profit which has been, and continues to be, a catalyst for change. The grant with be a boost to commercial activities, and will be a reward for a sustainable business model, as well as the example set by the business in the not-for-profit sector.

To be eligible, the organisation must be a not-for-profit with a deductible gift recipient status and the social enterprise must generate at least 20% of its revenue from commercial / trading activity.

If the grant is being sought for a social enterprise within a not-for-profit, the social enterprise initiative must generate at least 20% of its revenue from commercial / trading activity.

The social enterprise or social enterprise initiative should address one or more of the following : support for those Australians who feel socially excluded, support for Indigenous Australians, support for individuals with a disability, and the creation of lifelong learning and education leading to employment.

The winners will have the opportunity to also receive another $50 000 grant through the Westpac Employee Choice Award.

To apply, refer to The Catalyst Grant Funding & Applications Guidelines link on the Westpac Foundation website.

Spacecubed: Co-working, Collaboration and Innovation

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:39:55 +0000

Things are really starting to move on the Co-working, Collaboration and Innovation space that SiiWA is building in collaboration with a growing list of partners at 45 St Georges Terrace now called Spacecubed.

We believe that this space will be the catalyst for collaboration and innovation in Perth and regional WA with a unique structure to that consists of 1/3rd Social and Environmental Startups, 1/3rd Technology and Creative Entrepreneurs and 1/3rd Government and Corporate projects. This mix is where we see the real innovation coming from as we will have people who are running international NGO’s sitting next to app developers sitting next to Government Departments.

Full information on the space and events leading up to the opening can be found at www.spacecubed.org.

We will keep you up to date on this site as it is our first big partnership driven project but we look forward to seeing you at Spacecubed in early 2012.

Taking a Global View on Social Entrepreneurship with Tamsin Jones

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:08:50 +0000

Tamsin Jones has delivered social innovation initiatives in Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa and Zambia. Her extensive experience and networks in sustainability practice and in advancing social entrepreneurship has spanned leading and designing social impact programmes and strategies for corporates in the area of social responsibility, government agencies and mothers2mothers – a HIV-prevention NGO that now reaches 20% of HIV positive women who are pregnant globally.

Most recently Tamsin conducted research for Shell Foundation that examined the growth potential for a potential asset class of funds that provides “missing middle” growth financing to small to medium businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tamsin holds an MBA from the University of Oxford with a concentration on Social Finance and Social Entrepreneurship. She was awarded a scholarship from Oxford’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship http://bit.ly/a8elWp. Tamsin is based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Tamsin’s presentation will provide many examples of social entrepreneurship from her experiences in the UK and Africa in order to examine the key trends in social entrepreneurship practice globally. Topics will include scale and systems change and the emerging “impact investing” asset class.

Location:

CUSP Institute, 3 Pakenham St, Fremantle

Time:

Thursday 24 November
11.30am-12.30pm

Please join us for morning tea at 11am

Collaborative Partnerships in Action – Creating an enabling environment to achieve citizen centric outcomes

Claire — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:39:34 +0000

Every year, the WA Public Sector Innovation Action Plan Working Group hold an event, and the topic this year is ‘Collaborative Partnerships in Action.’ It is a full day workshop that showcases current public sector innovation projects, and encourages everyone who attends to gain ideas and insights from one another regarding the public sector, local government, not for profit and private sectors.

Public Sector Innovation Workshop

This annual event is one of five key initiatives being progressed by the WA Public Sector Innovation Action Plan Working Group.

The focus this year will be on the external relationships forged by and with the WA Public Sector to achieve common goals. This year’s topic is “Collaborative Partnerships in Action” and focuses on creating an enabling environment to achieve citizen centric outcomes.

This theme is consistent with the Government’s Putting the Public First and Reducing the Red Tape Taskforce Reports which identify a need for collaborative partnerships to achieve citizen centric outcomes.

This full day workshop will showcase current public sector innovation projects and encourage participants to gain ideas, insights and know-how on creating innovative citizen centric collaborations between the public sector, local government, the not-for-profit and the private sectors. Ideas around how and where these important sectors can collaborate will be further pursued as part of a workshop.

Topics Include

The role of government in creating an innovation environment and its importance.
The opportunities of the National Broadband Network roll out in WA.
Crowd sourcing as a tool to transform government data to relevant services for people.
Social innovation and how its transforming the lives of families in South Australia.
How we can co-create and co-design solutions in WA.
Tools to make us and our organisations more innovative.

Hear From

Hon. David Bartlett
Director
Explore Consulting Pty Ltd

Brodie McCulloch
Managing Director
Social innovation in Western Australia (SiiWA)

Dr Terry Cutler

David Shi
Project Manager / Research Analyst Transport Management Centre
NSW Department of Transport
Kaggle Competition for the Predictive Travel Time for the M4 Motorway: Positive Outcomes and Lessons Learnt

Carolyn Curtis
Family by Family – Designed with and delivered by families

Alex Roberts
Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
Intertwined Innovation: How innovation both enables and requires new ways of working together

Who Should Attend?

Anyone in the public, private or not-for-profit sectors, as well as Higher Education Institutions, interested in identifying and exploring common collaborative opportunities with public agencies and authorities in WA.

Why?

Hear about current examples and gain an understanding of what collaborative innovation can look like.
Share your ideas for the role and direction of innovation and collaboration within and with the WA public sector.
Use the opportunity to share the key innovation priorities relevant to your organisation and your ideas for collaborative innovation.
Identify possible joint projects and relevant contributors and partners.

Results of the workshop will be documented and provided in a report to all director generals and chief executive officers for consideration in relation to their own department’s business. The report will also be made publicly available online. This information will also be used to feed into the review of the Action Plan.

Date & Time - 24 November 2011 - 8:30am – 4:00pm

Venue - Burswood on Swan – 1 Camfield Drive Burswood

Cost - $95.00

Launch of the Internatinal Year of the Co-operatives 2012

Claire — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:36:57 +0000

With a theme of ‘co-operative enterprises build a better world’ the UN International Year of Co-operatives will bring co-operatives across the globe together to campaign for a ‘better’ business model.

Co-operatives are the businesses that deliver services and products through a socially responsible business structure. In 2012, co-operatives, credit unions, mutuals and member owned businesses across Australia will be celebrating their achievements and putting the building blocks in place to grow the sector beyond 2012.