social enterprise

As it was my wife’s birthday the other week we decided to stay away in Merseyside for a few days. As you may imagine, she was delighted to learn that I intended to attend the meeting of Social Enterprise Network Chief Executives in Liverpool...

Spurred on by my ’30 days’ challenge I sought a social enterprise to stay in. I was delighted when I found Port Sunlight Village Trust. The trust runs a model village originally set up by WH Lever, founder of Lever Brothers (now Unilever), for those who worked in factories at Port Sunlight. Managing 250 properties, a museum, hotel, theatre, shop, and a maintenance service, the trust is certainly very impressive. Within the village also lies the Lady Lever Art Gallery, run by Liverpool Museum, containing an amazing collection of items bequeathed by WH Lever.

Our time in the village was spent in a 2 bedroom Victorian cottage, built by an industrial philanthropist whose successor company transferred ownership to a social enterprise. The village itself is architecturally fascinating with a mix of mock Tudor, Flemish and classical English country design. Whilst in the village we made full use of all that it had to offer- both social enterprise like the shop, and privately owned, like the pub!

Staying where we did got me thinking about the juxtaposition between various forms of ‘enterprise’ and enterprise orientation. On the one hand you have the model of running a social enterprise to generate income and bring about a social benefit; and on the other, the model of an individual making huge amounts of money and later in life ploughing previous profits into a trust or foundation- much like Bill Gates has recently done. Both bring about benefit to a community, but we’d, rightly, hesitate and stop short of saying both are the same. The way the social enterprise sector operates does not tend to exploit people or resources, create unfair monopolies or engage in corrupt practices while unfortunately these are charges that can be raised with those who make a large enough income to endow it later in life.

The need that created Port Sunlight Trust is perhaps not as great now as it once was with the state taking care of health care and education. However is this not an ideal social enterprise: decent housing, green space, employment opportunities, and recreational activities, all with a low carbon footprint? I suppose the question now is whether this type of social enterprise can be recreated, and if so, is it likely to be come about through the hard work of the many, or the private wealth of a modern day wealthy industrialist.
Whatever the answer, I’d nonetheless recommend spending time at Port Sunlight Village Trust!