E-idea regional workshop “a starting point for great future projects”
06/10/2011
The second day of the E-idea regional workshop for over 40 eco entrepreneurs winners (or E-idealists as they are being called) from the Asia-Pacific region was all about implementing their learnings from the first day and further exploring their relationships with other E-idealists.
The second day of the E-idea regional workshop for over 40 eco entrepreneurs from the Asia – Pacific region was all about implementing their learnings from the first day and further exploring their relationships with other E-idealists. The sessions were dedicated to hands-on training for participants and the most special aspect of the workshop was the creation of “open space” where the E-idealists set their own agenda for the day.
These sessions were conducted by Cliff Southcombe (Social Enterprise Europe) where the E-idealists were divided into various groups and guided through step by step procedure covering important elements of social entrepreneurship – Government role in social enterprise, scaling up your product / idea to a global level, engaging with stakeholders and business and financial planning.
Cliff was highly impressed with the innovative ideas of these eco-entrepreneurs. "I am wowed by some of the projects in this room. In this workshop we have tried to introduce you to the spirit of social enterprise. On the other hand, we have learnt from each of your projects at a social as well as at a personal level. I hope that you will all join the global social enterprise community and will look at ways of keeping these discussions alive”, said Cliff.
During the day, teams from Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Korea and Vietnam presented their project concepts. This exercise helped them to get inputs and suggestions from other project –owners.
Post lunch sessions focused on the formation of World Cafes where E-idealists finalised their business model canvas and shared them with other group members. At the end of the exercise, each of the project owners was asked to develop a visual description of their idea/project in form an animal.
Simon Batters, LRQA’s Project Director for E-idea and the British Council’s Regional E-idea Project Manager, Huw Oliphant closed the day long session by ling thanking everyone for their co-operation. They encouraged the E-idealists by calling these discussions a starting point of great future projects.
"It is extremely heartening to see E-idealists interacting and communicating amongst themselves. Some project owners have openly talked about sharing and having stronger ties with other project owners from other countries. It is very exciting and definitely something more than we had expected." Simon commented on the progress of the workshop.
Significant amount of social media content was developed and pushed out over the two days, both by LRQA and the British Council as one of the objectives of this exercise was to create huge amount of exposure for the E-idealists. This will also help in inspiring other people around the world to think of sustainable ways of living. In addition, over the day LRQA and the British Council team interacted with the project owners to understand their needs for the future.
"These two days have supported the objective of this event in terms of fostering a network where these E-idealists talk and share their ideas and look for cross pollination opportunities where they can share best practices. During the discussions we have also seen some common themes coming up like education and communication and we hope to see some lively communication about these on the social network in the future", said Huw.
A public event has been organised on October 5th to showcase the E-idea winners and their initiatives for a greener future. The event will be attended by representatives from government bodies, social and eco-entrepreneurs, representatives from environmental and other non-governmental organisations and leading media in Indonesia.