Our Policy Priorities – Get Your Voice Heard
Posted: 10 April 2024, in Blog-News
Get Your Voice Heard (#GYVH) is the name of Social Enterprise Scotland’s public policy work that we do on behalf of our social enterprise members.
It’s about empowering social enterprises to achieve policy change at all levels, building a better environment for social enterprises to flourish and achieving a bigger, stronger social enterprise economy in Scotland.
This includes anything involving influencing MSPs, government officials, think tanks, local government officers, academia and others.
We understand that policy can be complex and difficult to engage with, so we aim to make the life of social entrepreneurs easier with Get Your Voice Heard!
We take a Partnership for Policy approach of joint policy work with other national/local organisations and SES members whenever possible.
This also includes: taking a positive “solutions to problems” approach, using practical case studies and storytelling, using effective, efficient and responsive policy engagement tools, empowering SES members to influence locally, thinking about practical policy consequences and tracking real life implementation and outcomes in local communities.
Our four key policy priority areas are below. We can help our social enterprise members get involved with these and any other policy area they’re interested in:
A Fairer Economy: This includes Community Wealth Building, the wellbeing economy, business purpose and social procurement.
Fair Work and Business: Including advocating for the real Living Wage, employee voice, purposeful work, employability and supporting impact measurement.
Environment & Climate Emergency: Covering Net Zero targets, a just transition, green enterprise and environmental protection.
Equalities, diversity, and inclusion: Advocating for more diverse social enterprise workplaces and supporting practical strategies to improve equality.
Check out socialenterprise.scot for policy news and updates – and join Social Enterprise Scotland to get the full benefits of policy engagement.
For policy questions or how to get involved with our policy work contact: duncan.thorp@socialenterprise.scot
Duncan Thorp, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Social Enterprise Scotland.