ESELA Annual Conference 2017 – Teaming Up in the Middle: How do business and nonprofits jointly create social impact?

ESELA’s annual conference was held on Friday, April 28 in Brussels, Belgium. The theme of the conference was “Teaming Up in the Middle: How Business and Not for Profits Jointly Create Social Impact”. The conference involved over 130 participants, including legal experts, social investors, policy experts, law students and venture philanthropy practitioners from across Europe.

The day saw a range of inspiring speakers and topical debates, including:

• the stories of ground-breaking entrepreneurs and their legal advisers
• comparative discussions of different social enterprise legal forms in different countries;
• suggestions about how the policy environment for social impact funds could be improved
• a glimpse at the ambitious policy initiatives of the European Commission on social enterprise
• a Ministerial perspective on the positive role of social enterprise in healthcare in Belgium-Flanders
• analysis of the different financing instruments and methods available for social enterprise
• an overview of the stage of development of social enterprise in Eastern Europe

One of the main themes of the conference was how, if we want to make a real dent in the biggest social and environmental challenges facing our world, we need increasing collaboration and ‘teaming up’ between public and private sectors with the social enterprise movement at its heart.

A copy of all presentation slides can be found here.