BuCoSoMa - Project Leaflet

To finish up our project work, we have jointly created a little project leaflet. It contains concise information about the project aims and results as well as information about how to contact the project partners.

Please feel free to distribute the leaflet to any person or organsation that might be interested in our project work.

download: Project Leaflet

BuCoSoMa dissemination event in Sofia

During our dissemination event end of July, we at GENERATIONS, discussed the problems that are reported in recent years in the field of adult learning in social institutions and that the functions and responsibilities of the institutions involved in learning forms are not clearly formulated and distributed between the managing bodies and organisations bound up with human resources development and vocational qualification of working force in the social sphere. Co-ordination links between them are very poor, but improvements of the organisation and management of the bodies providing social services are needed.

Our attendees were mostly representatives of Educational Institutions and were very interested to become acquainted with the Curriculum we developed in the frame of our project.

Simona Hristova, Managing Director of Association Generations, presented the project and the training concept for teaching basic economic know-how that is necessary for the successful economic management of socially oriented organisations.

The focus of our workshop was the teaching content which would have to contain an educational offer, so that it is interesting for the executives of social companies. Suggestions were made, that topics like networking, ethics, psychology, andragogy and other could be involved in the training modules.

Our participants expressed their willingness to cooperate and support us in the next steps to develop concrete models of learning, training and teaching business competence to employees and managers of social institutions.

Dissemination Workshop, April 5th, 2014 in Vienna

We at Easy Business held a dissemination workshop on April 5th, 2014 in Vienna. A total of 11 participants discussed the potential of the BuCoSoMa curriculum and its implications for Austria's VET centers.

The participants were mainly trainers and product managers from various VET centers in Austria. They were all interested in the marketing potential of the new curriculum and also in how to approach Social Enterprises.

Günter Schmatzberger gave a general presentation about the project, which lead into a discussion and workshop part in which dealt with the characteristics of the target group "Social Enterprises" and their special challenges.

The project's initiative was met with overall approval. Some questions were raised about whether it is possible to implement the curriculum in all types of social enterprises as there are many different kinds.

It was agreed that while the curriculum is a valuable step forward, in order to use the full potential of the initiative there need to be training guidelines and concrete material for learners and trainers. The workshop finished with suggestions and recommendations by the participants which were used in the proposal for the Erasmus+ strategic partnership "ABC - Alliance for Business Competence and Social Responsibility", which will deal with concrete training and learning resources.

Strategic Partnership Project Application: ABC - Alliance for Business Competence and Social Responsibility

In this year's application round for Strategic Partnerships within the Erasmus+ Programme we applied for a continuation of the BuCoSoMa project in the shape of the project proposal "ABC - Alliance for Business Competence and Social Responsibility".

Building on the groundwork of BuCoSoMa, the ABC project proposal aims at providing concrete models of learning, training and teaching business competence to employees and leaders of Social Enterprises. These models intend to bridge the gap between the business world and the world of social responsibility and promote synergies and mutual benefits between these two views.

Our proposal is currently in the process of being evaluated by the National Agency in Germany. We very much hope to be given the chance to continue the valuable work we started with BuCoSoMa in order to help solving a pressing issue in today's European economies.

Final Conference: Presentations of local Social Enterprises

Here are the presentations of Fairkauf and STEP for your further reference:

Presenation Fairkauf (pdf)

Presentation STEP (pdf)

       Finale conference in Hannover

On 11th of June 2014 the finale conference took place in the Ada-und-Theodor-Lessing-Volkshochschule Hannover (VHS Hannover). The institute is situated in the city-center directly vis-à-vis of the town-hall. In a warm welcome by Michael Guttmann, head of the Volkshochschule, he explained how the VHS Hannover has been getting to be involved in the subject “Social Economy” and the relation to other finished or running projects as e.g. “MESSE (Mechanism for Enhancement of Synergy and Sustainability among Enterprises)” , an Interreg IVc project in which the VHS Hannover is participating. The project’s brochures have been distributed and Cristina Marina presented the MESSE-website which includes a tool for supporting social enterprises.

Then Günter Schmatzberger from EasyBusiness in Vienna introduced in the project and gave a presentation: From the idea to the results. You can see the presentation here in the blog.

In the reports on the situation of Social Enterprises in the partners’ countries the following challenges seemed to be general:

1.       Because of the economical crisis in the last years in most countries the public subsidiaries are decreasing. That means for the Social Enterprises that they have to develop a new strategy to sell services and products and to get participants. Social Enterprises realized in this situation that they are not visible. Up to this difficult new situation they never have done real marketing und now they have to start with but they suffer a lack of knowledge.

2.       The second question in Social Economy was described as “the gap between social worker and business-management”.  The social worker who only want to do his job for support their clients and on the other hand the necessity of business-management for a stabile financing and future options. Furthermore in the most enterprises the business-management is in the hands of non-professionals as priests, social worker and so on.

In the presentations of the two invited Social Enterprises “Fairkauf” and “STEP” both topics played a roll.

Fairkauf, presented by Mr. Zielinski,  is a social warehouse in the city-center of Hannover which works today without public subsidies. Their motto is “earning money for doing good and not doing good for earning money”. Fairkauf sells clothes, books, furniture, kitchen utilities and so on, which have been donated. They never buy the products they sell, they only use donations. The profit is used for employment and training of people who have been longtime unemployed or other bad conditions for integration in the job-market.  Their strategic symbol is a flying seagull balancing in the air with its two wings: one wing is the business strategy and the other the social responsibility – both have to be in balance in a social enterprise.

Fairkauf is managed by professionals who are in retirement and volunteer their time. For sure  that is a strength and an important reason for the success of fairkauf. Fairkauf as a social warehouse had to do marketing from the first moment: they have to sell their goods and they need motivated employees.

Mr. Wyborny, general manager of “STEP = Network against substance abuse and other types of addiction” presented this social enterprise and gave a presentation about the lack of applicants with business skills and knowledge for management jobs. STEP is a limited company not for profit which means they need profit but they do not distribute the earnings. STEP works in 27 places in Lower Saxony in different kinds of establishments for addicted people (consultation centers, treatment, schooling, therapy and so on). The professionals of STEP are mostly social workers, followed by pedagogues and psychologists. The key positions in the middle-management are occupied by those professionals too, but they need management and business knowledge in this position which they never have learnt in their studies. So training for those people on the base of our curriculum should be very useful.

At the end of the following questions and answers the next steps for developing this training were described. A new project “Alliance for Business Competence” is planned and the partnership applied for subsidy in the new program of the European Commission called Erasmus+. Aim of this project would be to realize training modules and a certification system for business training in social enterprises on the curriculum developed in the running BuCoSoMa project.

All participants expressed their complete satisfaction with this interesting conference!

Renate Ackermann

Ada-und-Theodor-Lessing-Volkshochschule Hannover

 

 

 

 

BuCoSoMa Pilot Seminar in Bulgaria

We at GENERATIONS also did our training course on Social Management. All trainees agree the training was well worth it. We think we made learning easy, effective, engaging, and productive. We realize there are so many more benefits than the certificate. It helped us to design our own training plans and programs, and to motivate others to participate as well. Lecturers and trainees determined and coordinated together a framework of the areas and terms of training. The management theories and the thinking models were discussed and compared with the experience and potentials of the trainees, and the steps for practical implementation were coordinated. Particular importance was attached to creating a network among the trainees and to learning from each other both during the seminar and afterwards. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits is the appreciation that one can be learning all the time, even if you are not in a formal training program.

BuCoSoMa Seminar in Slovenia

In January 2014 the representatives from Social Enterprises attended the Seminar about the BuCoSoMa curriculum, with the topics:

- overview of whole curriculum and
- accounting in detail.

The aim of the pilot Seminar was to test some topics from the BuCoSoMa curriculum with the participants from Social Enterprises. In Slovenia we have tested the topics of Accounting.

The participants were very interested in the most topics of the curriculum, as they are lack of some economic knowledge and they would be interested to gain some basic economic knowledge in order to help them in their work positions.

More about the content tested:

Olga Pregl, Vedoma Slovenia

BUCOSOMA SEMINAR IN GRANADA

Last february took place the seminar of the Busines Competences in Social Management project in Granada.

A group of expert in social management participated in the seminar which proporcionate us a feedback very interesting to continue in the development of our Curriculum, here you can find some of the conclusions and pictures of the seminar



Conclusions

}SOCIAL COMPANIES ARE REORIONTING THERE ACTIVITIES TO PRIVATE SECTOR

}DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION REQUIRES DIFFERENT ORIENTATION IN THE COURSES

}THE CURRICULUM IS NOT VERY INTERESTING FOR SOME PROFILES THAT DEMAND MORE HR MANAGEMENT

}THE E-LEARNING ELEMENTS SEEM TO BE APRECIATE DUE TO THE LACK OF TIME OF THE WORKING PEOPLE

Please find an entire presentation of the seminar and the contributions done to the project by the experts clicking this link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1OsPnpyNe_BbVZZbDV1Q0FVVGs/edit?usp=sharing

Eine aktuelle Präsentation des BuCoSoMa Projekte können Sie hier herunterladen.
A presentation of the BuCoSoMa project in German language can be downloaded here.

BuCoSoMa Pilot Training Evaluated

 

All project partners carried out pilot trainings (2013/2014). The students have been mostly employees from Social Enterprises or students who are educated for caring professions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Page 1 of our questionnaire)

 

 

53 participants gave us a feedback and filled out a detailed questionnaire.

The results confirm our thesis that there is a big need for more business competence in social management.

 

-       52  assessed the need for Business Management knowledge in Social Enterprises as “very relevant” or “relevant” and

-       41 confirmed that our curriculum would be “very much” or “much” useful for their current professional situation.

-       44  confirmed that exams and certificates are ‘very valuable’ or ‘valuable’ for their career.

-       35  wished ‘very much’ or ‘much’ more e-learning elements to be included in future lessons.

-       And last but not least:

     49  participants (96%) would recommend ‘very much’ or ‘much’ the BuCoSoMa curriculum/ course in their organizations.

 

The following topics were missed or should be improved/ modified in the final curriculum:

-       Genaral Administration

-       Human Resources Management

-       Communication

-       Networking

-       Marketing

-       Accountancy

-       Risk Management

-       Fundraising

-       Quality Management and

-       no technical ‘business’ terminology.

 We will keep that in mind.

March 2014

Diethard

A Pilot Training on Business Management for Social Enterprises in Germany

On 17 January 2014 a Pilot Training that was especially designed for Social Enterprises took place at the venues of the Zentrum für Erwachsenenbildung Stephansstift gem. GmbH (Stephansstift Adult Education Centre) in Hannover.

Eleven participants, among them directors and managers of social enterprises as well as trainees and future executive in the area of social business, took part in the one-day training that focused primarily on the basics of finance and balance sheet accounting.

During the training, participants were challenged not only to gain an in-depth insight into the theoretical background, but also to solve tasks that were extra developed by the trainer, Ms. Imke Lohmeier, for their specific use.

With an experience of over 20 years working in different financial areas, Ms. Imke Lohmeier has been currently working as a free-lance coach and trainer for Business Studies at the University for Applied Sciences of Hannover. It is maybe due to her large experience that she managed to put a topic that is viewed by social managers more often than not as being rather dry and uninteresting into simple words and easy comprehensible tasks – according to the participants’ words after the session.

Curious? Make your own impression of the training materials by having a preview right here. 
You might be able to download it all here soon.

In the end of the workshop, participants were asked to fill up an evaluation form. The evaluation results can be sum up like this: All participants found Business Management knowledge in general to be very relevant or relevant to Social Enterprises.  About 82% of participants said the specific topics addressed in the curriculum to be much or very much useful as regards their every-day work, while somewhat less participants - still making for almost 64% - believed that such training was much accessible or affordable, and 55% believed that the training was innovative or very innovative. Referring to certificates, again, seven out of eleven participants thought them valuable or very valuable to their careers – while more than a third (36%) did not share this view. However, all participants said that they will strongly recommend the training within their companies. When it came to the time they were willing to invest in Business Management education, however, the spectrum varied considerably, with equal percentages for more than a week, up to a week, and up to 2 days (each group accounting for some 27%) on the one hand, and up to one day and up to 5 hours (with about 9% each) on the other hand. Little more than half of the training participants (almost 55%) wished for some e-learning elements to be included in the curriculum.

The Zentrum für Erwachsenenbildung Stephansstift gem. GmbH (Stephansstift Adult Education Centre) is a Lutheran educational, study and meeting centre founded in 1985.

The workshop was held in co-operation with the Ada-und-Theodor-Lessing-Volkshochschule Hannover (VHS Adult Education Centre). The Ada-und-Theodor-Lessing-Volkshochschule Hannover is a non-profit organisation which is run as a part of the municipality of Hannover. It is financed through course fees and public subsidies.