Community Hubs
What is a Community Hub?
An SEWF Community Hub is a place where a community of like-minded social entrepreneurs and changemakers come together to connect local conversations with the global social enterprise movement. During SEWF23, like-minded individuals can convene at a Community Hub closest to them to collaborate and discuss local social enterprise issues with each other. This provides an opportunity for them to discover each other, for new individuals to learn more about social entrepreneurship, find and exchange ideas, solutions or assistance within their community, town or city and at the same time be connected with global participants and conversations during the Social Enterprise World Forum.
Applications for SEWF23 Community Hubs are now closed.
Where do Community Hubs happen?
Community Hubs take place in different regions, towns and cities across the world that want to create more awareness about the social enterprise movement. We recognise that while some regions and communities may already have a thriving and supportive social enterprise ecosystem, others may be at the start of building and nurturing an ecosystem that supports social entreprise. Yet we welcome all who want to share new learnings and bring the social enterprise movement closer home while connecting with the larger movement and global conversations.
Image: Choices for Youth Community Hub in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
When do Community Hubs happen?
SEWF Community Hubs were hosted during the SEWF23 Week.
Community Hubs may choose to hold a two-day event with live content streamed from SEWF23 with local in-person breakout sessions, discussions and networking. Others may take a more light-touch approach with an evening or afternoon event, providing a space for their community to come together to view SEWF content (live or on-demand) and have local conversations, while connecting globally through the SEWF event chat, Q&A and networking.
Who can host a Community Hub?
Community Hubs are hosted by organisations dedicated to convening, supporting and growing the local social enterprise ecosystem. They can be hosted by a single organisation or as a collaboration between different organisations in a town, city or village.
Why Community Hubs?
The Community Hub model was developed to address some of the following issues:
- Community Building: SEWF is more than an annual event, it’s a growing community of people around the world dedicated to accelerating and moving forward the Social Enterprise movement. Community Hubs aim to increase awareness of this ecosystem, allow collaborations across organisations and let social enterprise leaders feel a sense of belonging to a global movement.
- Technology: Strong broadband at Hubs can improve accessibility and participant engagement. One of the requirements of becoming a Community Hub is to have adequate broadband and other technological requirements (sound, screens etc.). Hubs can stream live or recorded content from SEWF. Participants can join via their individual devices to connect with others around the world, join live Q&A sessions, network with others and access the marketplace and other areas of the event.
- In-person networking: Our Community Consultation results show that people are equally interested in networking and content. No digital platform can match the experience of interacting in-person with peers. Community Hubs will facilitate local networking to strengthen the local ecosystem.
- Local content: In addition to streaming live and/or recorded SEWF content, Community Hubs can develop their own programme of locally relevant content.
- Increase accessibility and reduce carbon footprint: The Community Hub model is not just a reaction to the travel limitations of 2021-2023, it is part of our event model to address environmental and accessibility issues.
Read inspiring stories from past SEWF Community Hubs
SEWF 2023 Community Hubs
