Pathway through tress

Published Jun 2024

Deep experience

These are communities that bring together people who share deep context and experience on a specific topic of social enterprise activity or challenge. The goal is to develop leading practices and share these with others.

Introduction to deep experience

These learning communities bring together people with deep experience around a specific area of social enterprise activity or challenge.  They have an intention to learn together, solve problems related to the focus area, and develop practices to share widely.

The key attributes of deep experience learning communities are that they:

  • Focus on a specific area of shared inquiry and relevance to the social enterprise sector.
  • Leverage wisdom across diverse individuals, organisations, and roles with expertise in the focus area.
  • Build trust among community members to enable the free exchange of information and knowledge.
  • Facilitate interactions that enable members to gain learning from the group and contribute to the group’s learning in the identified focus area.
  • Have an identified coordinator (or co-coordinators) and processes to support regular communication, interaction and learning.
  • Have regular meetings (online) and pursue activities between meetings that create learning value for group members.
  • Develop agreed terms of reference and ways of working.
  • Provide insights and advice on issues related to their area of focus.
  • Develop new practices, guidance, tools and strategies to build capability in the identified focus area.
  • Share knowledge and practice resources with the sector to advance the area of practice.
  • Inform the development of a collective and strategic voice on the topic.

Global examples

Some global examples of deep experience learning communities include:

SEDI funded

SEDI funded deep experience learning communities include:

  • Green Collect: Circular economy - challenges, needs and opportunities for social enterprises.
  • SEFA Partnerships: Bridging the gap between regional social enterprises and finance.
  • Future Minds Network: Youth-centred design and engagement in social enterprise - creating pathways for youth to shape the sector's future.
  • Link West: Staying in place - transitioning neighbourhood and community resource centres into social enterprises.
  • Black Card: Understanding and respecting Cultural Protocols to build long term partnerships with First Nations peoples and communities.
  • Permaqueer: Orienting futures - decolonising practices and systems-change in the social enterprise sector. 
  • Morgan&co: Lived experience ethical storytelling.

Deep experience learning communities

  • Illustration of people of different ages and abilities collaboratively building and framing structures, highlighting teamwork, creativity, and inclusion in a shared space.

    morgan&co: Ethical storytelling for social change

    This learning community brings together ethical storytelling practitioners and social enterprises from different spaces and places across the country, who are doing good work in the margins. The purpose is to convene a space of solidarity to share learnings and lived experiences, develop good practice together, and co-develop resources for broader sharing to build the capability of the Australian social enterprise sector.

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  • A choir of older adults stands in a garden, singing from sheet music while a conductor leads the group in an outdoor performance or rehearsal.

    Linkwest: Staying in place

    This learning community will bring together neighbourhood and community resource centres that are leading a place-based, community-led social enterprise response to meeting the needs of older residents in regional Western Australian communities. The ‘staying in place’ social enterprise approach is running well in several locations. These organisations are well-placed to share their journeys with other organisations seeking to make a similar social enterprise transition.

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  • Students sit at round tables in a classroom, smiling and engaged in discussion during a collaborative learning or workshop session.

    Future Minds Network: Youth engagement and pathways

    Youth engagement and pathways is a learning community for social enterprises that aims to create meaningful opportunities for youth to grow, lead, and thrive. Together, participants of the community will connect, co-design, and share strategies that effectively engage youth-ranging from leadership and training to feedback, design, and the creation of real pathways for change.

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  • An adult emu walks through a dry, golden field followed by a group of chicks, with trees lining the horizon in the background.

    SEFA Partnerships: Rural and remote funding landscape

    This learning community will bring together a group of rural and remote leaders working to deliver social impact; and a group of funders wanting to support social impact in rural and remote Australia. From experiences of frustration, it will look for opportunities to increase the flow of funding across Australia’s diverse geographies.

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  • A wooden A-frame sign with a black chalkboard circle displaying the handwritten message "WORKING TOWARDS A CIRCULAR ECONOMY," placed on a sidewalk near a black tiled wall.

    Green Collect: Circular economy

    Help shape a new learning community for social enterprises working in the circular economy — a space to connect, learn and lead a fair and inclusive transition. It will explore shared challenges, grow our collective understanding, and strengthen the sector’s voice in shaping circular solutions.

    Learn more
  • Outdoor learning space with red chairs arranged in a circle on grass, a whiteboard nearby, and trees providing shade.

    PermaQueer: Orienting futures

    Orienting futures is a learning community for people working in social enterprise who want to explore new and better ways of doing things. It will look at how to care for people and the planet, understand power and systems, and learn how to make real, lasting change — all while supporting emerging culturally and ecologically responsive practice in the social enterprise sector.

    Learn more
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