Priority areas of development of the social entrepreneurship support system were discussed at the Exposition

On June 28, the plenary session "Social Entrepreneurship 2030: How Do We Create a Human-Centered Economy?" was held at the International RUSSIA EXPO as part of the Social Entrepreneurship Forum "More than Business". Experts shared their vision of the priority areas of development of the social entrepreneurship support system for the next six years.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin sent a welcome address to the Forum participants.

"Social entrepreneurship is an important and noble cause to which each of you pays special attention. You invest in the production of socially important goods and services, employ people with disabilities and parents with many children, graduates of orphanages, implement other projects that improve the quality of life of citizens and promote an atmosphere of kindness and responsiveness in society. The Moscow City Government attaches great importance to the development of this sector of the economy. Broad measures of support for social entrepreneurs, including consultations, training, promotion, preferential lending and grants are born and find practical realization," reads Sergei Sobyanin's address.

By five years since the adoption of the federal law defining the concept of social entrepreneurship, it has become clear what kind of infrastructure is needed to support social entrepreneurship, what kind of funds should be available, how the environment of sustainable development and fundraising should work, what kind of relationships, including regulatory ones, should be in place. Senator of the Russian Federation Olga Yepifanova spoke about the development of social entrepreneurship and noted what is lacking for its successful functioning.

"Over these five years, social entrepreneurship has become one of the most important tools for solving socially important tasks. As of January this year, 11 thousand social entrepreneurs were registered, including nine thousand individual entrepreneurs and three thousand legal entities. In total, more than 82 thousand employees work in social business. It may seem like a little, but in reality, it is already quite noticeable", emphasized Olga Yepifanova.

Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Tatyana Ilyushnikova described how the community of social entrepreneurs was formed, drew the attention of those present to the figures testifying to its scale, and also gave an example of outstanding projects in this area.

"At first, social entrepreneurship was formed as an institution, as a movement. Today, the annual revenue of social entrepreneurs in 2023 amounted to 102 billion rubles, which means that this is already quite a decent community," said Tatyana Ilyushnikova.

Artem Metelev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Youth Policy and Chairman of the Association of Volunteer Centres of Russia, spoke about the ways of turning a volunteer into a social entrepreneur.

"We believe that social entrepreneurship might be the final stage of development, starting with volunteering. We offer this path to people who voluntarily join this system, as the organizer of a volunteer project can become a social entrepreneur. We register a huge number of people — around four thousand unique users daily – and motivating them to become social entrepreneurs is something we consider very important and beneficial for the country," said Artem Metelev.

The Social Entrepreneurship Forum "More than Business" was held at the Exposition from June 27 to 28. It was attended by representatives of city and federal agencies, small and medium-sized businesses, large companies, development institutions and non-profit organizations. The experts discussed the prospects of socially oriented entrepreneurship development, cooperation with NGOs and large businesses, considered ways of finding financing and scaling up initiatives, approaches to training specialists and attracting young people.

The Forum included open dialogs, presentations of the best cases in the field of social and technological entrepreneurship, an exposition of technologies and other events, and the awarding of the winners of the All-Russian contest "My Kind Business -2024".

The Forum was organized by the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovative Development of Moscow, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the Social Projects Support Fund.