Social entrepreneurs are society’s problem solvers. They are people who see a problem in their society, develop a solution and take action. Camilla Marks is a social entrepreneur, she is the founder of Toddler Talk.

Toddler Talk is a support service for all parents who are determined to ensure optimal speech, language and communication development in the early years of their child’s development.

“Because we genuinely care about the social problems that the people we want to help have.” 

“You have to balance the entrepreneurship piece with the social enterprise piece. No matter what you do, you have to make sure it’s self-sustaining and viable for the future. I think filling out multiple and tedious forms and the bureaucracy involved with accessing grants and fundraising, I think there’s a lot more initiative in it and that it’s not considered a dirty word – it is okay to consider yourself as an entrepreneur as well as someone who cares about a social problem.” 

“From my perspective, they’re the Mum and Dad of social entrepreneurs in Ireland. I genuinely wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. I started with an idea and the amount of support, affirmation, engagement and emotional support as well as everything else, means that I’m still here and I wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for SEI.” 

Over the past 18 years, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland has identified and supported more than 500 social entrepreneurs across the country like Camilla who are championing and driving solutions in areas such as mental health, homelessness, the environment, education, and unemployment. 

Drawing on our 18 years of experience of walking the journey with social entrepreneurs, the team created the SEI Spark toolkit! This toolkit will offer practical advice and support to anyone, from any background, with an idea or passion to solve a social problem to enable them to spark positive change.

The team at Social Entrepreneurs Ireland has been working to bring our website up to date, adding our 500 alumni and sharing their case studies! View the case studies below of just a selection of the social entrepreneurs that SEI has worked with. For ease of use, you can filter by county, region, sector or programme.

If you want to find out more, read the What is a Social Entrepreneur? #ARISE blog post.

 This blog post is a part of a larger project for the Awareness Raising Initiatives for Social Enterprises (ARISE). This project was approved by Government with support from the Dormant Accounts Fund.