10th March 2017
Tracey Muirhead has been in charge of the School for Social Entrepreneurs Scotland since its inception in 2012. One of the key things the School does is to provide training to enable people to use their own entrepreneurial and creative skills to develop social businesses or charities.
It is these training programmes which help people realise their potential to bring about long-lasting social and environmental change. SSES’s model is different from many other schools in that they bring in experts and practitioners who have built their own social businesses to guide their students through every stage of the business development process. On their longer courses students are even provided with a mentor from one of the school’s corporate partners, really helping these individuals to achieve their goals through advice, coaching, support and contacts.
SSES seeks to empower those with enterprising attitudes to create sustainable solutions to unmet social needs. Most of those that have been through their programmes have direct experience of the issues they aim to address, and the school believes that personal experience builds a strong foundation of practical knowledge which can be used to grow a successful social business.
The SSES was founded in 1997 and has since grown to become a global network with 12 locations in the UK and schools in Canada and India. Tracey has been involved in social enterprise since 2002 and has worked on a few different projects in the east coast during that time. Her experience and passion for this kind of work is very apparent in this interview, and it’s clear that it’s this kind of drive that is making SSES so successful in Scotland. She was also nominated for the Social Enterprise Champion Award at 2016’s Social Enterprise Awards Scotland.
I hope you enjoy.
Links
School for Social Entrepreneurs Website
School for Social Entrepreneurs Scotland Facebook
School for Social Entrepreneurs Twitter