Happy New Year. I hope you had a great festive break. We are looking forward to an action packed 2020.We have lots of events, activities and announcements to make. All in good time. I wanted to briefly reflect on the last ten years at PSEN and, WOW, what a decade!

Social enterprise in Plymouth – in all its forms of co-operatives, community businesses, trading charities, community interest companies, etc – has advanced so much, in large part due to the dedication of people like you, our members and our partners like Plymouth City Council, POP+, Dartington SSE, Social Enterprise UK, Social Enterprise Mark, The Chamber of Commerce and the LEP to name but a few. What a collective of brilliant people and organizations. I think its fair to say Plymouth Social Enterprise Network has played a key role too.

I’m proud of what we’ve collectively achieved as a city since PSEN started in 2010:

1. First UK Social Enterprise City (first in world maybe!)
2. The UK’s best week-long social enterprise festival
3. A leading social enterprise place which people across the world look to (folk from Sweden, Italy, South Africa, The Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Greece, Jamaica, Finland, Poland have all been here to find out more)
4. A seat on the Plymouth Growth Board – helping to keep social enterprise at the heart of economic policy making
5. The City Council’s pioneering Social Enterprise Investment Fund and Co-operative Development Fund.
6. Power to Change and Rank Foundation investment and support
7. School for Social Entrepreneurs running multiple programmes here
8. Specialist expert social enterprise business advice programmes secured
9. Climate emergency declared
10. Developing the inclusive economy work
11. Influencing policies for social value in procurement
12. Three universities inspired to embrace social enterprise as a model
13. One of the largest health and social care providers (Livewell) in the UK started here

These are just some of the highlights, I’ve probably missed many more. Thanks to all who have served on the PSEN board over the years to help achieve this.

Where will the next decade take us? We want social enterprise to be central to the way we do business in Plymouth; a leading place for social enterprise start-up and development; a place where social enterprise is thought of as a model of choice for new entrepreneurs. We are building on good foundations but there is much more to do. Our pressing issue is to develop a new social enterprise strategy for the city. Work on this is well underway and will build on the research into social enterprise in Plymouth conducted last year. We can only achieve all this with the support of our fabulous members. A network is nothing otherwise. Please join us if you haven’t already. I look forward to hearing from you.

Plymouth Social Enterprise Network
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