School of ME Annual Report
Summer 2019 - Summer 2020
Opening remarks
Friends,
this is the first annual school of me report and I am especially pleased to write these introductory words addressing you. Although officially our organization began to work only at the end of 2018, we already have results that we want to share.
We are a unique organization that makes unique educational products. Everyone in our team believes that the development of Ukraine and the world is strongly connected with the development of business, which exists not only for profit. Such a business is called social, green, school and many other names that provide the potential for creating new standards for doing business. To accelerate these irreversible changes in standards, we are investing our efforts in the main thing - people who will become guides to the future or conscious entrepreneurs.
During the year, we managed a lot: we organized an Accelerator for social enterprises on the basis of UCU, began piloting the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, released a manual for trainers on social school entrepreneurship, conducted a series of trainings in schools, and that's not all. The highlight among our activities is the creation of the first interactive video lesson on social school entrepreneurship, which we will present soon.
The School of ME continues to grow with you. We greatly appreciate the cooperation with our partners, including ChildFund Deutschland e.V, the UCU Center for Entrepreneurship, East Europe Foundation, WNISEF, as well as the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany within the framework of the Active Social Entrepreneurship in Ukraine project.
We plan to do even more, and invite you to join our new projects, which will also definitely become unique and important.
Artem Kornetsky
Chairman of the Board of the School of ME
Section 1. Information about the organizationWho are we? What do we do? What do we believe in?
Who are we? What do we do? What do we believe in?
The School of ME, or the School of Conscious Entrepreneurship is a public organization that promotes the ideas of conscious entrepreneurship and the development of relevant projects in Ukraine.
Our team consists of experts in relevant topics, experienced public figures and entrepreneurs.
The main tool for the realization of our mission — to promote the dissemination of ideas of conscious business — we consider education, and therefore we conduct thematic trainings and lectures, accelerators for social business, courses on basic entrepreneurial education for teenagers.
And not only.
Types of conscious entrepreneurship that cover the activities of our organization
Socialentrepreneurship
Youth entrepreneurship
ImpactEntrepreneurship
School entrepreneurship
Creativeentrepreneurship
Women's entrepreneurship
We have our own manifesto
We believe that:
1. Business must do good
2. Business must do good and be profitable
3. Education can be different: flexible, interesting, applied and at the same time fun
4. People who have united around an idea are a force that can change the world for the better
Our main achievements for 2 years of activity
5
Large projects implemented
27
Events were held
700+
Participants were trained
4.000+
Total people involved
Section 2.The main successes of the yearWhat did we do throughout the year? With whom and how did we do it?
ProjectsAlmost all year we, as an organization, lived and grew together with the participants of the Active Social Entrepreneurship in Ukraine project with the support of the German Foreign Ministry.
The project was devoted to the development of social and social school entrepreneurship in Ukraine, and it consisted of different stages: an acceleration program for 20 representatives of social enterprises, 13 trainings in schools of small towns and villages of Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv regions, the development of an interactive video lesson on social school entrepreneurship.
In addition, within the framework of the project, the pilot of the first venture fund for social enterprises in Ukraine was launched — USVF, which has already made its first investments in five Ukrainian social enterprises.
EventsThe main events of this year were a series of online webinars "Mindful Business", which collected several thousand views on the organization's Facebook page. Within the framework of this series, there were three webinars from three different speakers, covering the main issues of conscious entrepreneurship:
"What is it?", "Who is it for?", "How is it?"
In addition to their own series of webinars, members of the School of ME team joined more than 15 thematic trainings and lectures from partner organizations, wrote five articles on social school entrepreneurship in the magazine for school principals "PUZO", helped in the creation of a manual and school course on social school entrepreneurship and received the first legal opinions for its legalization.
Section 3.Our projects and eventsDetails about the largest projects and events we have implemented during the year
The project consisted of four main parts:
Acceleration program for social enterprises
We selected 8 teams of social startups and during six two-day training modules and active mentoring support (30+ hours for each team) helped them grow and strengthen their social enterprises. Three of the most promising social enterprises received grant assistance upon completion of the accelerator.
A series of trainings onsocial school entrepreneurship
The participating teams that completed the accelerator went to 13 different schools in small towns and villages in Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv regions to conduct a two-day training on social school entrepreneurship in each. We also published a manual for trainers with the help of which these trainings were conducted, and today everyone can use it.
Interactive video lesson for schoolchildren and teachers
In partnership with the creative agency Vertigo, we created a 90-minute video lesson on social school entrepreneurship for Ukrainian schoolchildren and their teachers, and together with the lesson manual we uploaded it to the public domain.
Ukrainian Social Venture Fund
A separate part of the project, and in fact, a separate project was the creation of the Ukrainian Social Venture Fund , the first venture fund for social enterprises in Ukraine. Since February 2020, the fund has been operating in a pilot mode, and has already invested more than UAH 300,000 in 5 Ukrainian social enterprises.
Acceleration program for social enterprises
To participate in the acceleration program for social startups, out of 152 applications, we selected only 20 participants from five different regions, which formed eight teams:
Excursion Bureau "Special Journey", Social Bakery "Dobrodiy", WoodLike Woodworking Workshop, Simka Contact Center, Independent Printing House "Bukivnichka", Shop "InvaFishki", IT School IT-Camp and the Laboratory for Gamification of Socially Important Topics.
Among the participants were families, veterans of the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, people with disabilities and a priest. During four months and six training modules, 20 lecturers taught our participants creativity, fundraising, marketing and strategic management.
Up to 15 other mentors - some of whom are successful social entrepreneurs - provided the teams additional advice on topics such as business modeling, social media presence and hiring. Seven trackers - each of whom was assigned to one of the teams - were in constant touch with the teams and took care of their successes and failures.
A series of trainings on social school entrepreneurship
According to the terms of participation in the project, after the completion of the acceleration program, each of the teams had to conduct a two-day training on social school entrepreneurship for schoolchildren in one or two secondary schools of small towns and villages of Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv regions.
At the beginning of the project, it was planned to conduct trainings in 15 schools, but due to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, trainings took place in only 13 schools, but covered more than 300 schoolchildren and their teachers.
In schools our teams taught students for two days what social school entrepreneurship is and how to establish this in their own school. The students went from generating an idea to creating a business plan for their own social school enterprise.
In addition to trainings, a manual for trainers of social school enterprises was developed during this stage of the project. Any teacher or mentor who is interested in creating a social school enterprise can use the manual to conduct training and further launch the enterprise.
A series of trainings on social school entrepreneurship
The last stage of the project was supposed to be a large conference on social entrepreneurship, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was decided to replace it with a video lesson on social school entrepreneurship in order to further increase the coverage of this important topic.
The result of this decision was the creation in partnership with the creative agency Vertigo of a 90-minute interactive video lesson for schoolchildren throughout Ukraine.
Since the general school year has already ended, we are looking forward to the start of the next one in order to hear - we hope - happy reviews about our video lesson and the history of its holding in dozens of Ukrainian schools in September.
Active Social Entrepreneurship in Ukraine in infographics
Project partners
The Active Social Entrepreneurship in Ukraine project was implemented by the School of ME in partnership with Kinderhilfswerk ChildFund Deutschland and the UCU Center for Entrepreneurship with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, or Ukrainian Social Venture Fund, is the first venture fund in Ukraine that invests in social enterprises whose business models are based on achieving social and environmental changes.
It was founded as part of the Active Social Entrepreneurship in Ukraine project, and by the end of 2020 the foundation will operate in a pilot mode on the basis of the School of ME.
The fund's investors are legal entities and individuals, and the fund's model of operation is to provide selected social enterprises with fully or partially repayable grants.
The first results of the fund
Ukrainian Social Venture Fund started its activity in January 2020.During this time the first competition of partially repayable grants took place, the results of which are:
71
Social Enterprise took part in the first grant competition
5
Social enterprises were selected to provide funding by the fund
341.500
Selected social enterprises received UAH from the fund
Initiative Group of the Foundation
Several other wonderful organizations involved in the development of social entrepreneurship in Ukraine joined the foundation and management of the fund.
Among them:
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the world thinks abouteducational activities. The inability to host offline events has led toa sharp jump in the number and quality of online events.
We decided to respond accordingly to these changes and held our firstseries of webinars, called "Mindful Business".
For three weeks, every Friday, we went live with our experts in mindfulness andinformed entrepreneurship and discussed topics that are importantfor business as awareness, mission definition and team building.
Section 4.ImportanceOther Important Things We Would Like to Share
Our mysterious plans
What's next? Where is our liner of conscious entrepreneurship heading?
Social school entrepreneurship is a particularly important topic for us.
We believe that entrepreneurship is a way to change the world for the better, and that it is necessary to learn this method from childhood.
We believe that in 10-15 years the main drivers of change in Ukraine and the world will be those who now go to school, and therefore we are making every effort to make that reality.
In the future, we strive to work with schools even more and have already taken the first steps towards this: we conducted a series of trainings on social school entrepreneurship in schools, created a large interactive video lesson about it.
To the stars!
What do they say about us - our friends, participants and partners?