Social enterprise day 2022: how to behave in the world of dynamic changes
Citizen organizations and social businesses are systematically operating under conditions of indefiniteness. Therefore, they are looking for ways to survive when facing the tempest of changes. Social Enterprise Day 2022 was the fourth iteration of this conference, where representatives of citizen organizations, public policy makers and practitioners were discussing ways of working efficiently in the dynamic world and to train resilience to changes. They were exploring why indefiniteness could be beneficial to social businesses and what can be learnt from stress-inducing situations.
“Resilience is an overwhelmingly broad concept which bears importance in all kinds of areas in our lives ranging from psychology to economy. Crisis situations can help us check whether we are really resilient. The conference provided answers how to be more resilient by exploring the success examples of social business, insights of experts and real life stories of individuals currently facing the horrors of war. This time, everyone was jointly looking for the answer how to develop a more resilient society” was the message of Jurgita Ribinskaitė-Glatzer, the founder of Public Enterprise Geri Norai LT and the organizer of Social Enterprise Day 2022.
One of the characters of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll explained that, in their country, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” In order to lead a peaceful life and be efficient at work in the contemporary dynamic world, we are required to develop our skills of adapting to uncertainty, alterations, innovations and the rapid course of events. The regular change, renewal and restructuring has already become routine in the world of employment. Even though novelties may trigger stress, yet, such situations encourage the progress of not only the enterprises as institutions but also the advancement of their staff. The good news is that everyone of us has a way of adapting to the new reality, which is called Resilience and defined as the human skill to adapt to an unexpected situation, lead a life under uncertainty conditions, and properly react to the developments while finding the optimal solution.
The rapid pace of events, the lack of clarity about the future along with the indefiniteness of the modern life may strike the stable surface off anyone’s feet, including even the most motivated people. The sociologist Natalia Sarata who is an activist and promoter of the human rights and a fighter against burnout and is also the founder of the citizen organizations Women’s Room Foundation and RegenerAction Foundation compares resiliency with the rotating seasons of the year.
“People frequently forget that rest is part of work. In other words, if we plan our professional activity, we must plan the rest as well. As the nature calms down in winter, and brings forth flowers in spring again, the same way we sometimes have to stay away from intense activity so that we could come back later with new ideas and concepts” were the words of N. Sarata who does not shy from admitting the fact that she has also experienced a burnout.
Representatives of citizen organizations, experts, developers of social businesses and public policy developers and makers from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine and Nordic countries were sharing their insights as to why the development of resilience is so prominently important in the contemporary society.
As the conference Social Enterprise Day 2022 was held virtually, all the presentations are available in their full version for free at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KqLDQL-eJM
This project is part of the Active Citizens Fund which is financed with funds of a financial mechanism provided by EEE.
