You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Social enterprises are organizations that use business strategies to address social, cultural, or environmental issues. Unlike traditional businesses, their primary focus is on creating social value while ensuring financial sustainability. These enterprises are often deeply embedded in the communities they serve, addressing local needs and creating positive social impact. They provide jobs, improve equality, and foster social inclusion.
The benefits of social enterprises include economic empowerment, as they support local economies and provide employment, and social cohesion, as they encourage community engagement and collaboration. Additionally, many integrate sustainability into their business models, tackling long-term social and environmental challenges.
However, social enterprises face obstacles such as financial sustainability, and the limited access to resources and funding, which can hinder growth. Despite these challenges, social enterprises continue to offer innovative solutions for addressing community issues while promoting social change.
Social Enterprises are commonly defined as “a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximize profit for shareholders and owners” (DTI, 2002, p. 13). Even though it is considered a business, there is no intention of generating profit for its shareholders. Instead, its objective is to create social impact, managing it in a responsible, transparent, and innovative way (Ferreira, 2019).
Definitions and typologies of a social enterprise fall into three major categories (Barbee and LeMay, 2019): 1) Social enterprises that are primarily charitable organisations and that now generate money through market activities; 2) organisations that were established around a purpose focused on human welfare and reinvest in their purpose rather than distribute funds to stockholders; and 3) organisations that generate revenues from market activities that are independent of their social purpose, but then donate substantial sums to social purposes.
This reader aims to introduce the topic of social enterprises and explain how social enterprises are connected to criminal justice systems (detention houses, prison, etc.) through their services and how they can promote local community engagement and have an impact on the rehabilitation and social reintegration of incarcerated people. Specifically, the reader contains information about 1) social enterprises’ concept; 2) social enterprises’ funding; 3) benefits and obstacles of social enterprises, 4) the connection with the RESCALED Pillars and 5) the connection of social enterprises and Sustainable Development Goals.
At RESHAPE, our personal engagement with social entrepreneurship has deepened our belief in its capacity to connect people, address systemic challenges, and inspire innovative pathways for inclusion and integration. Our journey has been depply enriched with the INSPIRE project and by the research, interviews, events and field visits to observe and understand the dynamics of other social enterprises in action. These experiences have revealed the immense potential of social enterprises to drive change, especially when integrated into broader networks of systems such as criminal justice, urban planning, and community development.
By providing employment, skill-building, and a sense of purpose, social enterprises can act as bridges between justice systems and society at large. The interplay between these enterprises, restorative cities and the ecosystem of a detention house can catalyze holistic transformation.
In this episode of Let’s Talk RESCALED, meet Duarte Fonseca, an independent consultant and co-founder of Reshape Ceramics, and Chiara Serafini, a socio-pedagogical worker and advocate for harm reduction and community empowerment. Together with the host, Noa Shoshan, they dive into the role of social enterprises in justice reform and their potential to foster meaningful reintegration. Duarte and Chiara share their experiences with social businesses like Reshape Ceramics and discuss the benefits and challenges of integrating such social enterprises into the detention house ecosystem.
In this episode, Let’s Talk RESCALED welcomes Jemuel Lampe, founder of Zuivere Koffie, the world’s first prison-based coffee roasters. Jemuel shares the incredible story behind Zuivere Koffie, a social enterprise that has helped over 100 formerly incarcerated individuals transition from prison to paid employment. Recognized with the Dutch Government’s Best Innovation Award in 2023, Zuivere Koffie exemplifies the power of social businesses to foster reintegration and reduce recidivism. Together, Noa and Jemuel discuss how social enterprises can be integrated into the detention house ecosystem, the challenges and opportunities they present, and their broader impact on communities, connecting insights from the Erasmus+ INSPIRE project.
The focus on social entrepreneurship emerges as an effective response in the search for a circular approach between the desire to build paths of personal development, the promotion of social inclusion and sustainable projects for people who have to serve a sentence according to a perspective that does not isolate them but capacitates them (also) in the world of work. And, since this perspective tends towards real social reintegration, the community-integration pillar becomes crucially important.
But what are social enterprises in the first place?
In this article, we took the opportunity to get to know the social business of Reshape Ceramics, through an interview given by its Executive Director, Marco Ribeiro Henriques.
Reshape Ceramics is a project implemented in Portugal, more specifically in the municipality of Oeiras, Lisbon, and is described as a training program for people who are/were deprived of their liberty, through work and training in the ceramics field. It currently employs 7 people and, since its creation, 21 people have worked at Reshape Ceramics. This project ends with the employability of these individuals while serving their sentences, and after completing their sentence, they still have the opportunity to remain connected to external work.
Social reintegration is one of the greatest challenges faced by individuals who have experienced situations of vulnerability, particularly those who are or have been in contact with the prison system.
Social enterprises have become one of the main tools for facilitating the reintegration of individuals into society. They not only provide employment opportunities and training for previously incarcerated people, they do so in a supportive, human-centered environment where other factors leading to offending behavior can also be addressed.
In November 2023, RESHAPE, together with all partners of the INSPIRE project, conducted a visit to Repy Prison in the Czech Republic, where we explored innovative solutions within the prison system. As part of the travel to the Czech Republic, we also had the opportunity to visit Strecha Restaurant, a social enterprise that employs individuals who have been formerly deprived of their liberty or have experienced homelessness. This unique initiative combines gastronomy with social impact, creating opportunities for the community to engage directly with and support vulnerable groups.
On April 2024, RESHAPE visited the Netherlands to explore initiatives that promote social inclusion for individuals currently or formerly deprived of their liberty. The visit included a tour of an Exodus house in Leiden and two inspiring social enterprises. One of which, Zuivere Coffee, a coffee brewery and shop that produces coffee, tea, and pastries inside prisons, employing incarcerated individuals The company also operates several cafés in Amsterdam and Zaandam, creating meaningful opportunities for reintegration. The other enterprise visited was Heilige Boontjes, an ethical coffee enterprise based in Rotterdam that trains young people distanced from the job market, offering them a path back to a positive role in society.
In April 2024, colleagues from RESCALED, RJN, Rubikon, and WayBack attended the inspiring Prison Insights 24 conference in Lisbon, organized by our Portuguese INSPIRE partner. The programme was full of great projects and innovative ideas to change the paradigm of prisons and criminal justice. Jana Smiggels Kavkova spoke on a panel on employability, along with representatives from Working Chance (UK) and Yellow Ribbon (SGP).
The conference featured discussions on legal empowerment for vulnerable communities by Jhody Polk of the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative, and social enterprises such as Down North Pizza, which helps erase employment barriers for formerly incarcerated people through its “Cook Up Change” initiative, and RESHAPE Ceramics, which produces unique handmade ceramics by former and current incarcerated people, with profits reinvested to expand its impact.
This training is the third module of the INSPIRE Academy, consisting of three modules, exploring the ecosystem of detention houses, their relationship to restorative cities, and their connections to social enterprises. In this module, you will learn more about social enterprises, how they are connected to criminal justice systems (either that is a detention houses, prison, of people transitioning to liberty), and how they can promote local community engagement and have an impact on the rehabilitation and social reintegration of incarcerated people.
In October and November 2024, the INSPIRE Academy launched an engaging series of training sessions across three modules: The Ecosystem of a Detention House, Restorative Cities, and Social Enterprises. Our team began by brainstorming how to design a training structure that would effectively address the unique challenges and opportunities associated with social enterprises. We carefully identified the target audience, and developed methods to ensure the online sessions were interactive and impactful. Drawing from field experiences and extensive desk research, we collected insights into successful social enterprise models and their role in addressing systemic challenges, such as unemployment, inequality, social exclusion and quality training while still working for financial sustainability. We adopted a “train-the-trainer” approach, equipping participants with the skills to replicate and deliver the training in their own contexts, amplifying the impact. The goal was to inspire participants to explore innovative ways to address root causes of societal challenges at the micro, meso, and macro levels, leveraging the power of social entrepreneurship for systemic change.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.