Building the Next Generation of Social Entrepreneurs

This webinar explores the opportunities and challenges of supporting emerging social entrepreneurs, including:

• What drives young people to found social enterprises, often in response to lived experience or a passion for solving a local problem.
• The importance of purpose-driven business models that centre social or environmental impact from the outset.
• Reflections on the personal toll of social entrepreneurship: isolation, rejection, burnout, and the need for emotional resilience.
• The role of community, mentors and peer support in sustaining founders, particularly when navigating uncertainty, growth, or early setbacks.
• The importance of validating the problem before designing the solution, and ensuring communities define their own needs.
• Strategies for getting "in the room", including persistence, values-aligned networking, and building confidence to pitch and follow up.
• Balancing “doing good” with doing business, finding common ground with stakeholders, articulating impact in commercial terms, and being clear on value.
• Honest insights into funding barriers, highlighting the need for unrestricted capital, trust in young leaders, and more streamlined access to early-stage support.
• Encouragement to keep showing up, stay close to your purpose, and remain open to evolving your approach as you learn.

Show notes and quotes

Tionne Young: “There's no point starting something that people aren't actually going to use to solve a problem that people aren't actually facing.”

“Remember that building that community around you that believes in what you're doing is super important.”

Imogen Clarence:  “It's hard to get in the room, but once you do, get them to listen and you've got to give them a reason why they can't say no.”

“So many times I have to sit down and work from what is the purpose of this? Why do I want to do it? Why am I going through all of this rejection and all of this isolation? Why am I doing it? And then everything goes off the back of that. If you're passionate about it, you get back up. You just keep going.”

“If there's somebody in your world that is doing this, it's very hard. It's very lonely. You might not know about it, but even just sitting down and letting them vent, they could be throwing different words at you that you have never, ever heard before, but just being somebody that's there.”

Yash Dutt: “The way he articulated it was, you're always auditioning, you're always on stage… …The simplest things. Showing up, putting your best foot forward how valuable that is.”

“Being able to talk and understand their perspective and come to that common ground is usually a key to productive discussions moving forward.”

“This is incredibly difficult, and I did not expect it to be as difficult as it was. It often takes a couple of years staying in the game to get to the point where people recognise you, trust you, and you even maybe begin solving the right problem as well… …You have to be in this for the long haul, and if you can stay in it, you get those rewards for sure. But it does take time.”

Jack Growden: “It's a very difficult sector. I do a lot of these conversations and I try and massage that into a nicer message, but it's just bloody hard. What's the key to the success in this sector? It's hard yakka.”

“We plug holes, we fill gaps, and if we're not there, if we don't turn up tomorrow and the next day and the year after, that gap just grows wider and wider.”

“You really do have to become multi-skilled and be able to be across everything because you're covering ground that, if in a for-profit enterprise, you'd normally have 10 staff to do. It's probably the best professional development journey, starting an organisation like this, you could ever have, because you have to learn everything on the go.”

Explore more

For those who are keen to dive deeper and do differently, here are some links to learnings and resources mentioned by the speakers and/or related to the open learning topic:

• The ASE Group 
• Dreamtime Air 
• Yuva AI 
• LiteHaus International
• "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss
• Munrow Skincare
• ON YA Foundation 
• Plenty Gifting 
• Florapeutic