Workshops & Trainings
Experts support organizational development
For years, the Siemens Stiftung’s empowering people. Network has worked with special social entrepreneurs whose excellent ideas and intense passion provide improved basic services to customers through a product or service. Workshops and training sessions provide a platform for learning and exchanging ideas – an important ingredient for innovation, growth, and stability.
On the market with an idea for a good cause – but now what? In many cases, the usual management literature doesn’t help small start-ups and social entrepreneurs in development collaboration. Instead, we have developed a range of toolkits and workshops specially designed for their needs to help our members in all stages of business development.
Globally connected: The empowering people. Workshop
During the international empowering people. Workshop, members from all over the globe gather roughly once a year for sessions focusing on organizational development, scaling, or impact assessment. The workshop is a perfect opportunity to create valuable connections that span countries and continents, broaden personal horizons, and gain motivation for finding and implementing solutions to urgent problems. Collaborative projects and technology transfer initiatives within the network are often hatched at this event.
Regional exchange: empowering people. Onsites
Regional network gatherings focus on interactive formats on topics such as agile development processes, organizational structure, management culture and employee management, market analysis, and financing. Working with SEED/adelphi, we created a number of toolkits for social entrepreneurs to learn about and use during a multi-day workshop. Two to three of these workshops take place per year in various regions around the world in an effort to give as many network members as possible the opportunity to participate.
»Nothing can take the place of personal contact when it comes to establishing connections that last.«
Hands-on workshops provide practical information on how participants can turn the story of their businesses into a truly distinguishing feature. Storytelling is more than simply conveying information. It can also win over investors, employees, and customers. The story of a business, from the initial idea all the way to full operation, includes describing challenges and milestones that were encountered. Reflecting on these events proves to be a useful analytical exercise. In addition to the workshops, the empowering people. Network has also published a workbook on storytelling. It contains the basics of independent acquisition and practical tools for telling stories.
Barbara Börner has been advising social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations for over 18 years. She led programs as the deputy director of the Canopus Foundation and now teaches Social Entrepreneurship as part of the international master’s program in Environmental Governance at the University of Freiburg. Together with Siemens Stiftung and adelphi, she not only developed the program “Stories About Us” but also published a handbook of the same name. We talked to Barbara Börner about how versatile the workbook can be and what experiences she has had with social entrepreneurs in Africa.
Sabine Baumeister
+49 89 540487 302
Website
Background material
“Reaching the Next Level: Empowering Organizational Development for Social Enterprises,” empowering people. Network (2018)
Nicolas Chevrollier: „Holacracy: A Big Bang Approach to Self-Organization”, empowering people. Network (2018)
Nicolas Chevrollier: „Small is beautiful!”, empowering people. Network