Community Impact Conference: 2

January 28-29 2008 saw the return of many delegates alongside additions from all over Eastern Europe and the UK descend upon the town of Alfreton in Derbyshire to attend the second Community Impact Conference. The aim of the conference was to advance delegates vision and provide the knowledge and skill set to create social enterprises which will impact communities in a positive and needed way, and specifically how to target funding for such enterprises.

The conference began with Steve Holmes, Managing Director of the Genesis Enterprise Centre giving a tour of the facility which includes a family entertainment centre, business centre and conference facility. The facility became all the more impressive as Steve unpacked the journey of how the centre came to exist. Beginning as a dream, with minimal initial resource, only through faith and determination, Steve learned the art of writing grant applications to various foundations in a way that presented a compelling vision for positive social impact on the community. Through this process, they were able to access significant levels of funding and the momentum began to grow.

Not only do these facilities provide a real service to their communities, but they are also run as businesses which create revenues which are in turn
poured back into the charity to expand the overall objectives of the foundation.

The conference sparked entrepreneurial creativity and inspired delegates to dream of seeing similar enterprises birthed, particularly in Eastern European nations. EU funding is targeted at building capacity and social infrastructure within communities which are still developing in their post-communist reality. As well as encouraging delegates by seeing a real model, they also received very practical training to begin to move the vision forward, such as how to develop and articulate your dream, how to write a business plan, how to apply for various grants, and much more.

The delegates left the conference feeling inspired and encouraged and were challenged to look ‘outside the box’ for new resourcing methods to see their dreams and visions for their communities become a reality. Over the next two months, each delegate was instructed to clearly articulate their dream and to put together a sample grant application for Social Enterprise that will become the basis of grant submissions for EU funding. The delegates will reconvene in late October to move this process forward and to potentially develop some proto-type projects for Eastern Europe.

Since the Conference we have received good feedback from the delegates and have now confirmed partners and projects in Estonia, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom.

Watch this space for more information as the Community Impact Academy develops, to find out more email us on community@protonfoundation.com. You can also click here to read about our first CI Conference, or click here to read about the CI Academy.