The Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF), co-hosted by White Box Enterprises, is coming to Brisbane, Australia in 2022!
Impact Boom, supported by the English Family Foundation, has been leading the bid since 2017, with a committed belief in the strength of Australia’s collective social enterprise voice. If you’re interested in hearing what was involved, you can listen to the podcast on Impact Boom here. We know we have a lot to show for on the global stage, and we know our community could benefit from the incredible learnings from other countries.
SEWF is an opportunity for social enterprise leaders and practitioners from around the world to network and exchange ideas. The multi-day event of roundtables, panels and open forums will discuss issues relevant to running a social enterprise, measuring impact and navigating the ecosystem.
SEWF has been to Hong Kong (2016), Christchurch (2017) and Edinburgh (2018). Addis Ababa jumped in the year before last (2019) and then it went digital in 2020 thanks to COVID-19. 2021 is virtually being held in Nova Scotia, Canada and in 2022, thanks to major partners Westpac Foundation, Torrens University Australia and SAP, and supporting partners Tourism Queensland, MinterEllison and Griffith Yunus Centre, our humble Brisbane city has the great honour of hosting. It’s going to be a hybrid event, so expect both in-person and online events.
The Social Enterprise Unconference was the first initiative in a series of ongoing activities designed to unite the sector in Australia in preparation for the event along with Australia’s National Social Enterprise Strategy.
Hosted by Digital Storytellers, the Unconference was an opportunity to co-design the message that Australia presents to the global social enterprise community. In the Unconference format, no central figure wrote the agenda. Instead, the agenda was developed based on sessions attendees requested to run. Essentially, participants chose what conversations they wanted to create or participate in.
The event garnered 641 registrations, 562 attendees, 19 sessions, and one little Zoom link. What’s crazy about this is that the Unconference had no social channels. There was no one business or organisation publicly leading it from a comms perspective. The turnout, engagement and enthusiasm is testament to the strength of the social enterprise network and the partners involved in making this event happen is strong. The sector is hungry to form a more cohesive ecosystem and is willing to come together to do the work for it. Check out the full report and recommendations for the next steps leading up to SEWF2022.
So what’s next? The SEWF 2021 Handover Ceremony will be taking place on the 30th of September. This year’s host, Common Good Solutions (Halifax, Nova Scotia), will be handing over the baton in a cross-continental live stream during the SEWF 2021 digital conference. For those of you who have bought online tickets, make sure you come along!
