Hélène Malandain On The Key Steps Required To Grow The Impact-Led Business Movement Globally

Six years ago, Hélène Malandain made a big career change, leaving her corporate job to start her journey growing social enterprise in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Hélène has been working with the Ākina Foundation since then, and a key highlight in her career was to lead the team that hosted the Social Enterprise World Forum in Christchurch in 2017. The 1600-people event catalysed the social enterprise movement at a very auspicious time, and it gave the Aotearoa social enterprise sector a massive boost of confidence. Since then, Hélène has been a Director of the Social Enterprise World Forum and has the great privilege to be currently serving as the Chair of the Board.

Hélène discusses her decision to leave her corporate position to pursue social enterprise, and how working with the Ākina Foundation and leading the 2017 Social Enterprise World Forum helped form strategies to grow the impact-led business movement both in New Zealand and globally.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - To kick things off Hélène, could you please share a little bit about your background and what led you to working in the social enterprise sector?

[Hélène Malandain] - Yes, of course. As you mentioned, I worked in the corporate world for 10 years until I realised that I was not happy about my situation anymore. I worked very hard and I was feeling very drained. Working hard wasn't the issue however, the issue was actually a growing value clash. The clash between my personal values and the sector I worked in. I was a young adult at the time and my vision of work and self awareness had changed and deepened through the years.

It was a strong realisation that I wanted to find more purposeful work and that I needed to extract myself from that industry. I created the space and the time for other new opportunities to arise, which I think is a great lesson in itself.

I did my research and very quickly I came across Wellington based social innovation groups and then social enterprises through Hikurangi. I'm sure my story is not unique and resonates with quite a few of those working in the social enterprise sector.

You’ve been running lots of great projects at the Ākina Foundation since. Could you tell us a little bit more about the projects that you're currently involved in?

At the beginning of last year I took a new role within Ākina that involves leading the work we do in terms of capability building. Back then my team and I decided to call ourselves "Places and Networks" to reflect our vision, which is to support the growth of strong social enterprise places throughout and around New Zealand and the development of networks within and between these places.

The term we use is a place-based approach. In practical terms, we believe in locally relevant and locally led social enterprise support and we believe the communities hold the answers to their own challenges and they can become the best statures of change if supported in a suitable way.

[We acknowledge] that Ākina can't be everything to everyone and that we're working out the best ways we can translate our skills, knowledge and tools, and the best ways we can partner in the regions to support the growth of stronger and more inclusive local economies.

We’re certainly fans of that place-based approach, it’s the best way to go about it. How have you seen the social enterprise sector then transform and change over the last five years or so in Aotearoa, and where do you see it heading?

The sector has reached a whole different level of maturity in the last five years, and it's enjoying a lot more visibility. I think security and visibility obviously go hand in hand feeding into each other. I think it's fair to say that most of the reasons for this change are positive reasons. Of course, there's the harsh reality of the fact that we need to live and work differently in order to revert or slow down the damage we've done to our planet, and solve some of our most pressing social issues and the harsh reality has benefitted the rise of social enterprise. But this is not specific to New Zealand.

If we focus on the more positive reasons and changes in the New Zealand context, I would probably highlight three key changes over the last five years.

The first one is that central government has significantly and openly committed to supporting social enterprise from the first position statement on social enterprise in 2014, to the three year partnership which we are currently delivering.

That's a 5.5 million New Zealand dollars partnership with the Department of Internal Affairs that we are delivering with a range of partners to grow the conditions for social enterprise to flourish, a massive lever.

A second highlight and lever for change as you mentioned already has been hosting the Social Enterprise World Forum in Christchurch in 2017. This was a significant milestone for our social enterprise community and looking back we can now see how much impact it's actually had because by gathering our movement at such a scale for the first time, it's really given visibility to social enterprise as a concept. It has created a very powerful sense of solidarity amongst entrepreneurs who I think felt quite isolated and disconnected until that moment.

And by hosting the international community, it created energy as we learned from them, but also a sense of confidence because what I noticed is that most Kiwi social enterprises would have arrived with a lot of humility and a sense of lagging behind the rest of the world, and feedback from the international friends and counterparts was really positive and really beefed up their confidence.

The third reason I'd like to talk about is the shift towards social procurement and obviously the growing understanding and acknowledgement of the opportunity for government and businesses to create social value by procuring smarter. This shift is opening up lots of new market opportunities for social enterprise and Ākina launched the first NZ social procurement marketplace at the end of 2018, called "Fwd".

We have 60 certified services from 48 different social enterprises listed on this marketplace and a combined potential of 27 billion New Zealand Dollars amongst all of our buyers. That is another massive lever for change. That's been going and making a massive difference in the last year or so.

In terms of where it's heading, the one thing I'd like to highlight is that last year the New Zealand government launched "Indicators Aotearoa", which sits within a living standards framework. In a nutshell, this is New Zealand's acknowledgement that there is more to well-being than just a healthy economy. It's our commitment and our government's commitment to look beyond GDP to develop a more holistic view of our wellbeing. This is very powerful of course, for the entire economy and giving us a framework and a springboard to communicate what we value as a society and in our daily lives.

The indicators are a really good tool to assess the collective impact of polices and inform decision making. Overall we have a model for all businesses to articulate how they're contributing to our nation and people's wellbeing. It's not mandatory, but very fertile ground for social enterprises to continue to grow in New Zealand and to grow much faster. There's a lot of work to be done to transform the way we do business, but I can at least help enterprises to articulate how they contribute to these wellbeing indicators and for the economy to speak in the same language as government. This is a sense of looking forward and the context in which we are growing social enterprise.

There's some great reflections there Hélène. As Chair of the Social Enterprise World Forum then, which I mentioned will be held in Halifax, Canada in September this year, what do you believe needs to be done to accelerate this impact-led business movement globally so that we are tackling some of these most pressing social and environmental issues?

As I mentioned in my welcoming address at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Addis in October, I think there are three key things we need to do collectively for social enterprise and impact-led businesses to lead the charge in creating the system change. These are, one, to be more audacious with our work, secondly to be more inclusive and more accessible as a movement, and thirdly to collaborate better.

On the first one, being audacious, it's quite clear that we are running out of time and unfortunately people in Australia right now are seeing it firsthand. The pressure is really massive across the world to find more innovative ways to achieve social inclusiveness and wellbeing.

Back to my point about frameworks in the context of international reporting requirements, such as the SDGs (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) and others, we're seeing the emergence of these innovative policies that are thinking about intergenerational wellbeing, such as our NZ Living Standard Framework. I think these innovative businesses provide us with the framework to audaciously contribute. I think we can both advocate for the creation of such policies and we can then really capitalise on them demonstrating how impact-led business are a significant part of the answer.

The second opportunity is being more inclusive and accessible, making it easier for people to join our movement. There's loads of ingredients to this recipe and I think we need to cultivate authenticity.

I think we need to always put practitioners and their interest at the heart of what we do.

I think we need to be intentional about growing the equity of our movement. That is that the most under-served and under-represented communities get access to quality capability support. I think we've got a job to do to demystify social enterprise, and a job to do to make the case for social enterprise irrefutable.

[This involves] capturing data, measuring our impact, telling stories to advocate and influence. In that sense, the work Impact Boom is doing is very important to contribute to all of that. And the third one I mentioned is collaborating better.

Yes, we believe social enterprise has the greatest potential to transform our economy, but we cannot do it on our own. We need engagement, we need support and commitment from across sectors and we need to join forces with affiliate movements, and call it the impact economy, to break down silos and create movement to accelerate our collective impact.

I absolutely agree with those points there Hélène. If people were to travel over to Canada later this year for the Social Enterprise World Forum, what could they expect if they were to attend?

Well, the plans are very exciting. There's a very rich program developing at the moment. There's going to be a very timely focus on social procurement. There will be great learning opportunities in relation to Indigenous knowledge and traditions, reflecting the development of the social sector in Canada with similarities in Australia and New Zealand. Delegates can expect a very vibrant welcome from what's an incredible team of hosts and partners. There will be some great side events and great evening activities as well. The team on the ground talks about taking over the city of Halifax. I expect a very vibrant week with really welcoming Canadian values showing through.

They're a fantastic bunch of people. Changing the conversation a little bit Hélène, if we were to look at social enterprise from a policy perspective, what do you believe are some of the key steps that government needs to take to help foster and support an innovative social sector? You mentioned there's a partnership between Ākina Foundation and the New Zealand government. Are there any specific policies you'd like to talk about?

Yes. I've already mentioned social procurement. Last October the New Zealand government launched its revised government procurement rules for agencies to procure goods and services that deliver to broader social and environmental outcomes. That's definitely top of the list for me to answer your question around steps Government can take.

Another related step is shifting from outputs to outcomes in the way policies are made, implemented and assessed overall, and pushing this further to the rest of the community, I think there's an opportunity to set a legally binding framework for any organisation or at least any business to start with to report on their social and environmental impacts.

Other steps government can take include supporting innovative forms of legal structures and supporting the growth of impact investment, whether it's through research as we did here in New Zealand last fall for policies for direct investment.

Education and investment in young people is also a key, and I love this quote from the forum in Addis… one of the young entrepreneurs powerfully said that, "Because we are now the future, we are the present". They are the present!

We need to invest heavily in young people.

Governments should also invest in the ecosystem of capability builders. I'm speaking here from my day to day job, most capability builders are still doing their work on a shoestring or in a voluntary fashion in most places.

There's still a massive role for government to play in investing and building the infrastructure or creating capacity for ecosystem builders to do their work. Most importantly I think two things here in general. I think government should always collaborate closely with the sector and the practitioners as they embark on these steps and they should invest in upskilling their people.

Having strong champions within government is a key ingredient to effectively support and foster the sector.

Some great points there Hélène. You are surrounded by a huge range of different initiatives and social enterprises that you work with on a daily basis, so I'm really keen to hear about any particularly inspiring projects or initiatives that you've come across recently, which are creating some fantastic social change.

I've been following the work of Marie, who's the founder of "Wildness", an organic chocolate brand for a few years now. Marie is a French woman and she's based in Wellington. She recently joined our Fwd marketplace as a certified supplier and I'm amazed by Marie's work and her determination to making every aspect of her business ethical and sustainable. "Wildness" chocolate is an organic and fair trade chocolate. The fruit come from Brazil and it's also known for its health benefits. It's a plant that's a sister plant to cacao the packaging takes place in New Zealand and it's done by inmates to increase their chances of rehabilitation by gaining new skills. Even the design for "Wildness" was done by inmates and Marie insisted on a fair and decent wage. From memory, she offered about 10 times the average wage inmates would receive on other jobs and she was the first business in New Zealand to provide full wages to inmates behind bars.

Packaging is 100% sustainably made of biodegradable paper and potato starch and printed with soy-based ink in the community of partners they work with in Brazil. They're supporting the set up of a school. They launched in Singapore last year and they work with adults with special needs.

The list just goes on and I suppose what I love about this story is that Marie's goal is for each and every one of Wildness's actions to make a positive contribution to the communities where they operate. She pushes the boundaries of how much social and environmental impact she can create, out of a chocolate making activity.

I think a holistic view on our relation to people and the planet through the process of trading and trading value literally at grassroots level and this passion she's continuing through expanding the business in other continents now just keeps on amazing me. It's a really beautiful, inspiring story.

To finish off then, what books or other resources might you recommend to our listeners?

With the risk of being a little bit controversial here, my latest and very slim read is a book from ‘The School of Life’ series called How To Be Bored. I think it's a great antidote to our very busy lives and a good reminder of the importance to take the necessary time to reconnect with our inner selves. I think it's very important for all of us in particular, who push ourselves very hard every day to try and make a dent in creating a better and fairer world. We need to remember to be kind to ourselves and in order to be in a good place and to be able to support and energise others. I think this book is great. It's not about being bored. It's about creating that time that we all need to reconnect with ourselves and think about a longer term life plan.