Being part of the Social Enterprise Hub with Reading School is such an amazing experience for all of us at The Abbey. It’s not every day you get the chance to create your own social enterprise and really think about how you can make a difference in the world whilst building entrepreneurial skills for the future. From coming up with a mission statement to planning out our ideas e.g the feasibility of our idea, we’ve learned so much about working together and turning our ideas into something real. Working with Reading School has been amazing, it’s so nice to collaborate, share ideas, and make new friends along the way. Everyone brings something different to the table, and it’s exciting to see how our ideas grow when we all work together.
Leah and Evie, Lower VI
It’s been two weeks since I posted about SEH v3 and much has happened since the last lecture at Henley Business School.
A week ago, following the excellent opening lecture delivered by Ellen W. and Sam Hirsch, we followed this up with a workshop at The Abbey School, led by the superstar that is Rhian Burrell. Rhian took time to energise and inspire the students from The Abbey and Reading School with ways to articulate their messages to engage their audiences. The students then took these messages and applied them to their embryonic business ideas. At the end of the workshop, each of the five teams had clearly been able to focus their thinking into something that has the potential to fly.
Then this week, we were back at University of Reading for the second lecture, this time led by Sam and supported by Ellen. The focus this week was to try and develop clarity around the opportunities available to the teams so that they could construct their story, in the form of their vision and mission. Once again, at the end of the session, all the teams showed real progress in terms of developing their ideas and the way they are already articulating their business stories is incredible.
The team dynamics this year are extremely positive and I am really excited about the viability of the ideas being discussed. The compressed schedule of weekly lectures and workshops is working well and I hear that there is even a playlist to reflect each of the sessions being compiled – including “I can see clearly now” as the summary of this week’s lecture.
Next week’s workshop has a hard act to follow but I have huge confidence that Mark Mason FRSA and Erica Purvis will rise to the challenge as they share their journey with the students. No pressure guys and no spoilers either!
Mr Lovibond, Head of Business