A key issue for social entrepreneurs is access not only to organisations that will support their ventures, but also to good education and training programs. One initiative that will allow Australian social entrepreneurs to connect with a wide range of resources is the newly formed University Network for Social Entrepreneurship, a joint initiative of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (within the Said Business School) at Oxford University, and the Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship.

The Network aims to be a global community of researchers, educators, practitioners, and related networks to advance research, teaching and action in social entrepreneurship (at least 20% have to be practitioners in the field). The end goal is to contribute towards building better understanding of social entrepreneurship. It will address this task by providing a web-based infrastructure to strengthen and grow the research community, the teaching community, and the practice of social entrepreneurship by facilitating more effective researcher interactions and by encouraging the sharing of best practices amongst social entrepreneurs especially academics. The aim is to ensure that there are strong connections between practitioners who work in social enterprise projects, and those whose focus is on research. The website will also be an interactive tool for community-building and advancing key conversations related to research and pedagogy.

Leo can be contacted at leo@aise.net.au.
Emeritus Professor Leo Bartlett, Executive Director
Australasian Institute for Social Entrepreneurship

Back to News Reports list