Social enterprises are businesses trading for social and environmental purposes. Many commercial businesses would consider themselves to have social objectives, but social enterprises are distinctive because their social and/or environmental purpose is absolutely central to what they do – their profits are reinvested to sustain and further their mission for positive change.

Examples of social enterprise

Fifteen: a global restaurant business which operates an apprenticeship scheme for young people, between the ages of 18 and 24, alongside the day-to-day running of the restaurants.

The Big Issue: a street newspaper published in eight countries, written by professional journalists and sold by homeless individuals.

Divine Chocolate: a fair trade chocolate company co-owned by the cocoa farmers cooperative Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana.

The Elvis & Kresse Organisation takes industrial waste materials, turns them into stylish luggage and hand bags and donates 50% of the profits to the Fire Fighters Charity.

Green-works takes office furniture that would have been sent to landfill sites and offers it at a large discount to charities and other organisations.

Hackney Community Transport: an enterprise that operates mainstream bus routes, education transport for children with disabilities, social services transport for older and disabled people, yellow school bus services and a wide range of community transport services in London and Yorkshire.

The Hub: a global provider of service work accomodation, designed to be a place for business, creativity and social exchange.

Fixmystreet.com:a website to help people report, view, or discuss local problems they’ve found to their local government body in the U.K. by simply locating the problem on a map.

The Southwark Circle: an organisation that introduces members of the community to each other and acts as a bank of local, reliable, neighbourhood helpers in Southwark, London.

Slivers of Time: a UK Government programme that match-makes people who have time to sell with employers who need their skills and labour.

Global Generation: a charity that involves young people in creating a sustainable future through a diversity of community environmental projects, including growing food in skips on disused buildign sites and greening rooftops of schools.

The School of Life: a small converted shop in Central London that offers people a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well.

The People’s Supermarket: a start-up co-operative enterprise in which members exchange hours spent working in the shop for a discount on the price of their groceries.

The Brixton Pound: a local currency in the Borough of Brixton, London that works alongside pounds sterling, for use by local shops and traders and designed to encourage local trade and production.

London Creative Labs: a social business that draws people together to engage with diverse social problems and seek to provide answers.

The Do Lectures: a regular programme of events in the U.K. in which people are invited to come and tell a group of others what they Do.

Mindapples: a campaign designed to raise awareness of and promote open engagement with ideas of mental health.

Fantastic Norway (Norway): a studio engaged with architecture, design, development strategies, and mobilization processes.

Kul;Tour: a mobile ‘human library’ in which young people from diverse backgrounds are ‘borrowed’ to share their story.

Further resources are available via the links on this blog.