Servane Mouazan on Social Enterprise, Women and Networks. Tending the roots of social business.
“Women are active in the space where they have been historically confined to. It’s not something you are born with – that eagerness to help – it’s something you learn… and sometimes you learn it because you have no other choice with what’s around you.” ~ Servane Mouazan
See original page and recording here.
About this interview:
What does it really take to become a social entrepreneur?
In this episode Amisha sits down with Servane Mouazan, who has spent over 17 years working with women in social enterprise as the founder and director of Ogunte.
Servane shares a few special stories from the 7000+ social businesses led by women, who have been supported and mentored through the Ogunte network. The network includes a vast array of social businesses in areas from fin-tech to food security. She addresses and challenges the stereotypes around women in social enterprise and speaks to the real reasons so many women are inspired to do this work.
We hear how her early experiences and family dynamics growing up led her to fierce independence and a penchant for clever mavericks. This led her to seek out new horizons and to the serendipitous love that brought her to the UK and to social activism. She shares nuggets of hard-earned wisdom about the joy and pain of starting out as a social entrepreneur.
Servane has a wealth of advice for anyone thinking of setting up a social enterprise. We learn about the critical groundwork required before you dive in and register your domain name and how to get your financial house in order before taking the leap. She speaks about cultivating resilience and discipline, the joy of monitoring and evaluation, why you must make friends with friction and how to unlock the awesome power of networks.
“Whatever you come up with you need to test and validate… Its’ about designing well something that will serve your community.” ~ Servane Mouazan
Servane Mouazan is a conscious innovation consultant, passionate about co-designing human-centred practices and strategies with the staff and boards of socially conscious and sustainable businesses. She works mainly with women leaders. Her driver is not about saving the world at all cost, but certainly and rather transforming some people’s world. Servane was a contributor to the book, The Future Is Beautiful.
To find out more about Servane, visit www.servanemouazan.co.uk and ogunte.com
To connect or work with Amisha, visit www.amisha.co.uk
Links from this episode:
