AS ETHICAL ENTREPRENEURS
Learning is easy
All of Dairsie Primary School’s 52 pupils — aged between 4 and 11 — have become social entrepreneurs, either growing or cooking food, or serving soups, cakes and hot drinks when the cafe opens once a month for two hours after school.
The students also manage stock, keep spreadsheets of accounts and ensure that health and hygiene regulations are followed, said their teacher Ruth Selbie.
Running the cafe has given the children a passion for learning, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“It’s real life maths, money, business, technology, outdoors, home economics ... (every subject) seems to be covered by something they are actually bothered about,” she said.
“It’s hard to get them to care. But if they already care, then the learning is easy.”
In September, the cafe had more than 100 customers in a village of 400 people, said Selbie.
Residents from Northeden House, a nearby care home run by local authorities, visit the cafe and the children’s families bring their own elderly relatives.
After opening the cafe, the pupils began visiting Northeden House regularly, making soup and practising chair yoga with the elderly residents, who offered gardening advice in return.
“It has opened up our school to the wider community, allowing the children to gain a confidence in speaking to elderly people,” said Selbie.
“You’ve got this 87-year-old and this 9-year-old and they are laughing at the same thing.”
Fairness
About 1,000 schools in Scotland — or two in five — have taught their students how to run a social business since 2007, says the Social Enterprise Academy (SEA), which has largely driven the trend in Scotland with its nationwide tutor network.
SEA — itself a social enterprise — trains teachers and provides lesson plans and entrepreneurs to help students choose a cause they care about and run a business for at least a year.
It received 660,000 pounds ($862,092) funding from the government in 2016 to expand its work, communities secretary Aileen Campbell said in emailed comments.
“The Scottish government is inspired by the power of social enterprise as a tool for positive social change,” she said.
Scotland, a country of 5 million, has almost 6,000 social enterprises, providing about 80,000 jobs, the government says, many of them in poor rural communities.
SEA has global ambitions. It went international in 2012, rolling out social enterprise education in schools in Kazakstan, Greece, Australia, Malawi and Pakistan.
“It’s about developing a young workforce, preparing young people for work. The skills they’re developing have got to match the economy that is out there,” said Emily Mnyayi, SEA’s head of education in schools.
“It makes sense to kids. They’ve got a good sense of fairness.”