What training are land-based social enterprises delivering?
In recent years we’ve worked with dozens of the most successful land-based social enterprises, and we’ve seen them engaged in a wide range of education-related activities. This includes training other land-based groups, volunteers, delivering on-the-job training, and working with schools and young people. They are particularly well placed to deliver this training for many reasons, in particular because of their skills, experience and networks, and their possession of excellent sites from which to train. Furthermore, training often fits in very well with their social and environmental missions, as well as generating some income.
There is a huge deficit in land-based skills and land-based social enterprise make great trainers, but they need support.
What is stopping them delivering more training?
Key barriers include the difficulty of generating sufficient income from training and a lack of support for land-based training in general. We are greatly underusing the potential of the sector to deliver training, despite huge skills deficits in land-based activities, and clear benefits from the delivery of training by land-based social enterprises.
How can we help land-based social enterprise make training a bigger part of their models?
The report covers a number of strategies, from helping land-based social enterprises expand their vision of what is possible, to further research and securing funding. Shared Assets is committed to helping build the capacity of the social enterprise sector to deliver training. This means looking for opportunities to promote the sector, collaborating with enterprises on new trainings, and advocating for more support.
We hope this report can help social enterprises interested in delivering more training and give ideas to anyone interested in supporting this. Read the full report here, and be sure to check out our other report on the skills needed for land-based social enterprise.