Active Citizens is a social leadership training programme that promotes intercultural dialogue and community-led social development. The active citizens element is ingrained in our Youth Programme. Social enterprises, on the other hand, are businesses which trade in order to address social and environmental problems. Realising the importance of Social Enterprises, the British Council has designed and is implementing a Social Enterprise Programme in 29 countries including Ethiopia. Both Youth and Social Enterprise programmes fall under the Society work that we do in Ethiopia.
Realising the importance of intertwining these two programmes in order to bring about synergy, an Active Citizens Social Enterprise (ACSE) training of trainers (ToT) took place from 17-21 October 2018 in the Jerusalem Children and Community Development Organisation (JECCDO) training centre, in Bishoftu City.
The ToT was delivered by an international team of facilitators, including 2 from UK, 2 from Ethiopia and 1 from South Sudan. The ACSE workshop served the following purposes:
i. To understand the purpose and vision of the ACSE program
ii. To become familiar and confident with the learning journey and gain experience that enables delivery direct to future participants and communities
iii. To develop skills and value for intercultural dialogue and networking and
iv. To develop skills in using Active Citizen and the thematic Active Citizens and Social Enterprise (ACSE) toolkit.
Well recruited and engaged participants, who were keen to learn claimed that they were completely captivated by the training. The range and diversity of facilitators provided additional value for participants, both in terms of the array of knowledge and skills. Another strength of the programme was that it changed daily to reflect the needs and energy of the group.
The participants also claimed that the field visit was particularly insightful in contextualising social enterprises. Moreover, having a guest speaker who brought trainees to demonstrate their Social Enterprises was also well received.
This training programme is part of the grant scheme for strengthening the capacity of youth focused Civil Society Organisations with demonstrated commitment to developing the leadership skills of young people across communities in Ethiopia.