The Social Entrepreneurship for Migration and Development (SEMD) project conducted a series of trainings on impact measurement and management for Social Entrepreneurship Support Structures (SESTs) in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
59 attendees from 43 diverse SESTs participated in the two-day trainings across the three countries. The trainings aimed to increase the capacity of SESTs such as incubators, accelerators, youth, and entrepreneurship support organisations, especially those that benefit local communities, migrants and refugees to measure and manage the social impact.
Through an experiential learning approach and mobilising cutting-edge tools, concepts, and practices, the trainings aimed to enhance the participants’ understanding of the concept of impact ventures, and impact creation in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The trainings introduced tools, principles, and approaches that those ventures can adopt to define their impact, design impact creation strategies, integrate impact into their practices, and measure and assess the impact created.
“I was unfamiliar with this framework for impact measurement so almost everything was new for me” said an attendee, and added “my biggest learning would be the SDG impact standards, particularly how to set the strategy from scratch as it is the base upon which everything else depends on”.
The trainings were followed by one-on-one advisory sessions to support the SESTs with the implementation of their learnings and the development of the interventions they provide to social enterprises. SEMD will also organise further trainings on topics of fundamental importance to social enterprises and SESTs such as the upcoming training on Gender Mainstreaming in Programmatic Design in the first quarter of 2023.
About the project
The Social Entrepreneurship for Migration and Development (SEMD) project is a regional project initiated and funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by GFA Consulting Group GmbH.
The main objective of this project, which started in January 2021, is to contribute to strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem that enables the initiation, development, and implementation of innovative entrepreneurial solutions to migration and development challenges in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon in partnership with ACTED, Alfanar, and Changelabs.
The project is aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as; SDG 5 “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”; SDG 8 “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”; and SDG 17 “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development” and is fully aligned with SDC’s Programme Framework 2022-25 of the Thematic Section Migration and Forced Displacement (TSMFD).