Good practice:

Social enterprise summit

The Social Enterprise Summit is a social business forum held annually in Lithuania. Every year the forum brings together representatives from social enterprises, national government ministries, municipal governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), foundations, associations, and any business or organisation which has an interest in, or is working towards social innovations and social entrepreneurship. Foreign speakers also take part in the summit in order to learn good practices from abroad. The event specific objectives are various and depend on each year themes and tendencies in the social entrepreneurship arena. For example, 2020 forum was invited to talk about social investment practices that operate in the world and new measures that are being developed in Lithuania. 2019 forum discussed diversity, innovation and partnerships needed to be involved. 2018 forum’s main theme was provision of social services through social enterprise. Moreover, every year the summit aims to review yearly progress, results and set goals for a further period in order to develop a favourable and integral environment for social entrepreneurship in Lithuania.

Summit involves 3-4 private and public partners, who allocate their human resources for event delivery. General coordinator, who represents one of the organizers, works for around 20 full-time days. Total costs (coordinator, broadcast, simultaneous translation etc.) varies from EUR 4100-8000.

The Summit has become major yearly networking event in Lithuania, attracting various stakeholders and initiating broad public discussions in the social entrepreneurship area. Since 2014 seven summits have been organized. It has framed the background for the Conception of Social business (2015), and now the Social Enterprise Law is being prepared. Actually, the Summit has improved legal framework and cooperation between policymakers and practitioners.

The Summit practice can serve as an example for other regions on how to improve the cooperation between the social entrepreneurs and the public sector, and awareness raising about social enterprises among different stakeholders. Also, it can be an example, how to initiate legal changes within the social entrepreneurship environment by engaging a variety of different partners and sectors. This approach of national and/or regional summits can therefore be of interest for other European regions, since it contributes to better cooperation between public, private sectors and social economy.