Internship Volunteer Social Enterprise Consultant – Sri Lanka
Job Description
Hello!
We bring together talented people from different worlds to develop and scale social enterprises in hard to reach places.
Working alongside incredible partners seeking to make change in the world, we take career changers and career breakers, post-grads and sabbaticalists, corporate learners, freelancers and entrepreneurs to amazing places, to nuture and skill up grassroots social entrepreneurs.
In turn, we help you get equipped to develop your own game changing start-up, bring more meaning into your work or move into the sector.
This is a career development and immersion programme that sees you go on an incredible journey through social innovation, product development and travel through Sri Lanka.
Join us in Sri Lanka.
Following our inaugral programme in Sri Lanka, we invite you to collaborate, learn & design with social entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka in Feb 2016!
We are recruiting our third cohort of trainee Social Enterprise Consultants – skilled professionals who volunteer to support a grassroots social entrepreneur in Sri Lanka, in partnership with The British Council, Social Enterprise Lanka and Colombo’s Good Market.
This is in part a career coaching experience for you, as we will create the space for you to figure out your own career goals and develop your own ideas – but at the same time you will gain hands on experience in the world of social enterprise and product development overseas.
Who are we?
We are a small group of young professionals who have been making our move away from the corporate sector in the last few years. Since then we’ve been notching up hours in volunteer management, international development, youth media, CSR & social enterprise. Between us we have over 30 years of professional experience, and recently we’ve been running enterprise and social action youth programmes, managing over 200 volunteers along the way.
Who are you?
Having worked relentlessly for years in various corporates, NGOs or charities, in challenging leadership or executive roles, you’ve started planning your escape route. It’s time.
You’ll be passionate about sustainability, organic, fair trade, product design & brands. You love the idea of creating something from scratch and taking it to market! Or you’ll feel ready to help an existing grassroots social enterprise move into their next phase.
Applicants who have experience across brands and products in the food & beverage, personal care, fashion, textiles, art and handicrafts arena will be highly considered for this programme, as well as people with either sales, consulting, project management, marketing, branding, packaging, international supply chain, distribution, ecommerce, finance, scaling up or NGO / third sector experience.
What you would do?
You would come and become an invaluable part of the _SocialStarters team as a trainee Social Enterprise Consultant:
First up, we put you though our training week that equips you with everything you need to know about global and local social entrepreneurship, basic consultancy skills & start up methods.
We then match you with your own client, a social entrepreneur who needs your support!
You then conduct a needs assessment to determine what can be achieved in the following 5 weeks.
You’ll pick a project to work on, focusing on key objectives relevent to them.
Aside from your client work, you can work on your own projects or ideas with support from the team.
You will then spend the remaining weeks engaging in various types of work: identifying problems, designing solutions, sharing knowledge, creating strategies, testing ideas, building partnerships, designing packaging and brand building.
After training week the learning doesn’t stop either – we provide additional sessions and tools that give you a deeper dive into some of the methods we introduce, affording you better knowledge in key areas like finances, personal development, building your personal brand and marketing.
Who will you be working with?
Your clients will be a small group of grassroots Sri Lankan social entrepreneurs who are making a huge different in their communities tackling core social and environment issues.
We are currently developing our partnership with The British Council, Social Enterprise Lanka and Good Market – an exciting community hub in Colombo who specialise in providing a space for socially impactful and eco-friendly products. Having engaged with around 100 vendors they educate people about organic, fair trade, plastics and food additives and are a key part of the SE community in SL.
We may also have a couple of volunteer positions for experienced people who would like to consultant to our partners around strategy, scaling up, launching a new brand, PR & Marketing, building a website and HR processes. We can say more on this in the coming weeks when final details are announced. If you’re interested please point this out in your cover note.
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“I’ve attended dozens of training courses and workshops in my time, and I have to say that the format, style and quality of the training has been exceptional. I’ve learnt more than I ever could have imagined on topics such as social enterprise, lean start-ups and the local market. It’s been a fully rounded and immersive experience.”
Paul Goff, Former Supply Chain Consultant (Deloitte, Innocent Drinks, Sony Playstation)
Have a read of our blog www.wearesocialstarters.wordpress.com or visit our website www.socialstarters.org to find out more.
Compensation details
This is a learning & development programme for career changers, and people who want to do more meaningful work.
On this programme, you will contribute a programme fee that covers all in-country associated costs including comfortable accommodation, materials and other programme related expenses, project related travel as well as a contribution to the training. Flights, visas & food will be extra.
You will leave feeling equipped to tackle your what next, whether it’s to launch your own social start-up to find work in that arena. And you will have helped launch and develop real social enterprises in Sri Lanka.
Programme start date: 13th February 2016
Final Deadline for applications for February Programme: October 17th 2015