Summit to make social enterprise leaders in recession

Increasing the impact of social enterprise upon recession-hit Britain will be a main focus of a government summit next month.

The social enterprise summit, to be hosted by by business secretary Peter Mandelson and Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne, will take place in London on 12 May.

The event, first announced by Byrne at Voice09 in February, will be held at Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, a social enterprise on London's South Bank, over one afternoon.

Byrne said: ‘Social enterprises have never been stronger and this summit will help us to make them stronger still.

‘At the summit, we'll explore ways for social enterprises to play a greater role in fighting the downturn, rebalancing our economy and society and shaping post-recession Britain.'

At Voice09, the annual conference organised by the Social Enterprise Coalition (SEC), Byrne said the summit would help social enterprise to be a ‘bigger part of the British economy' and that it aimed to identify growth strategies.

It was during this conference that he said he wanted to see 25,000 people employed in the social enterprise sector ‘over the months to come'.

A morning of workshops will be held before the summit, focusing on increasing the impact of social enterprise, the role of social enterprise in fighting the recession and in the future economy and helping the sector scale up.

These will be chaired by leading figures in social enterprise, including social entrepreneurs, policy makers and regional development agency leaders.

Attendance to the summit is by invitation only.

Further workshops will be held by SEC this week and can be found here.