Developing Leadership through Social Action

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March 26, 2012

Developing Leadership through Social Action

Last time I asked the questioing how do you develop leadership to be truely invloved with CSR.

Through out my time in leadership development I have often heard leaders talking about wanting to get involved with helping their community, or setting up a project that helps others or do more than just donate money to charities.

The thing is it can be a bit daunting and it requires real leadership to get involved.

This led me to the question. How can leaders learn from social action?

The answer is a program that enables leaders to get development that is challenging and out of their comfort zone, whilst helping the local community. We put our toe in the water last year and ran a pilot program. Nine projects were created which inspired more than 100 volunteers to help. More than 1,000 people benefited and graduates from last years programme have gone on to generate more than £6,000 of funding for their local grassroots projects since November.This year we want to do more and have gained £3500 of funding from social enterprise funder Unltd, to set up a new social enterprise called Leading The Change. Companies want to make a social contribution.

The stats back up why with 80% of consumers saying they want businesses to be more socially minded and nearly 90% of graduates want to work for organisations with a good corporate responsibility record. A lot of businesses are already responding to this challenge and Leading The Change will help them go beyond traditional CSR activities and charity donations and help them develop leaders through social action.Developing the key skills of vision, engagement and enabling action through being involved with a community initiative is a great way of delivering benefits to the organisation in terms of the leaders scope of reference, the understanding of the community and also the delivery of a great CSR message.

We encourage more training to take this tripple win approach combining training with community action in a positive way.

To find out more about Leading The Change or the Community Leaders Programme call Toby today on 01273 382636 or email toby@hazelbranch.co.uk">toby@hazelbranch.co.uk. or see here for more info.