Australian Social Enterprise Stories project - March 2010 update

The Centre for Social Impact and Parramatta City Council are collaborating on a project to document stories of Australian social enterprises through a series of interviews. The interviews for this project are now complete and work is commencing on collating the data and compiling the publication.

Cheryl Kernot, CSI Director of Social Enterprise, is leading the project. Joanne McNeill, the Community Capacity Building Officer Social Enterprise at Parramatta City Council, is the project coordinator, including conducting the interviews and co-authoring the book.

Project aims

Stories of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship activity are largely undocumented in Australia. Over the past 10-15 years a number of overseas publications on these topics have provided a catalyst for developing the sphere of activity. This project seeks to contribute to addressing the gap in local material by producing a local publication.

Through these stories we hope to show the diversity of activity that the social enterprise model covers. Those chosen for interview were included as they show: a range of stages of development; different trading market sectors; a variety of social, environmental and cultural purposes; and different organisational forms.

The publication will be of particular interest to practitioners and those supporting social enterprise development. It is anticipated it will be available in late 2010.

Project Participants

The social enterprises that participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews for the project are: