Recently a friend and I decided to find The Grumpy Mule coffee shop in Yorkshire. We were looking forward to tasting different types of coffee in a slick looking coffee shop where we could buy coffee machines, bags of ground coffee, coffee beans and sit down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee, cake or toast for our breakfast before we went on our way.  We set off snaking through the beautiful peak district national park heading to Holmfirth to find this Yorkshire coffee haven.

We arrived in Holmfirth and followed the directions to Bentley Road, “this must be wrong” we both remarked as the directions took us to an industrial estate, “surely this can’t be the place where the coffee shop will be”. Helen began laughing as she wound down the window to ask a passerby for a place that sells coffee. “yep you’re in the right place, turn around it’s the last unit up that road”. Well now we both felt a bit stupid but continued anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Welsh social enterprises are set to benefit from a £7.1million injection of cash from the European Union’s Convergence Programmes and the Welsh Assembly Government.

Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration, has announced that social enterprises in West Wales and the Valleys will have access to “The Social Enterprise Support Project“. Over the next five years the project aims to:

• provide mentoring, training, support and advice for pre-start social enterprises.
• develop sustainability and growth within social enterprises in Wales by
  • offering support and advice to 150 existing social enterprises.
  • creating more than 50 new social enterprises.
  • creating 300 new jobs.
• raise awareness of the positive impact that social enterprises have on social and economic regeneration.
• identify gaps in service provision in some of the most deprived Welsh communities and researching new opportunities.

The project will be delivered by the Wales Co-operative Centre in conjunction with sell2wales and a range of organisations. to read more about the project visit the Welsh Assembly Governments Website.

Footsey- The Social Economy Trade Fair is due to take place on Thursday 16th October at York Race Course. I attended this event last year as a stool holder for UnLtd. I wasn’t sure what to expect having done numerous trade events in the past with some being better than others, but I really enjoyed the day. I found it really interesting, it was great to nose around and look at all the new social enterprises that had sprung up over the past year and to get a chance to chat to established enterprises that I had never got round to speaking to in the past. I was also surprised by the ammount of delegates, I don’t think that I stopped talking all day. I would expect this year to be just the same only with more new and exciting social entreprises to hunt out and a good programme of discussions including:

• Changes In The Health Sector
• Impact Assessment
  
• Sales And Marketing for Social Enterprise
• The Legal Structure Surgery
• Finance in a Challenging Environment (Panel)
• Growth and Survival
  
• Social Enterprise as part of the National Curriculum
• Social Enterprise: Winning with 2012

You can get a look at some of this years key exhibitors on the Footsey website.

Registration: The registration fee for social enterprises is £48.50+VAT which is over half the price of a normal delegate fee.
You can register for the event online.

The Clinton Global Intiative (CGI) have just held the 2008 Annual Meeting in New York. The meeting brought together 80 current and former heads of state, hundreds of top CEOs and non-profit leaders, major philanthropists, and 10 of the last 16 Nobel Peace Laureates “to examine some of today’s most pressing global challenges and transform that awareness into tangible action”. This year the 3 day meeting focused on education, engery and climate change, global health and poverty.

You can hear/ watch all of the interesting debates on the CGI website. Some of the topics that were covered are:

Education

• Providing real choices: what works for at-risk adolescent girls and boys?
• Beyond microfinance: strengthening business and entrepreneurship education for women in emerging economies
• Expanding the school-health connection

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20th Novemeber 2008 is the offical day for Social Enterprise. As such the Social Enterprise Coalition are holding a national photographic competition. Photos have to demonstrate how social enterprises are transforming lives. The winning photograph will be published in a special edition of the Big Issue and will exhibited at various conferences and london galleries.  The winner will also receive a digital camera. The deadline for entries is the 28th October 2008. To find out more about the competition visit the Social Enterprise Coalition website. 

Social Entreprise London are holding a conference on 22 October 2008 at Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank London. The conference will open up discussions on the future of social enterprise in London looking specifically at business development, public-private partnerships and new emerging markets.  To learn more about the conference, it’s speakers and seminars sessions click here.   To book your place visit the Social Enterprise London registration page.  

Seth Godin is a marketing expert and writes one of the worlds best marketing blogs. Seth has a history of entrepreneurship and started his first enterprise at the age of 14 (read more about Seth on Wikipedia).   Seth has recently produced a free half hour presentation on how to grow your business for non-profit organisations. Listen to his what he has to say by clicking here.   Why not subscribe to Seth’s blog and get information about his free ebooks, seminars and general thoughts about business and marketing.     

Rightly or wrongly when someone first told me about Volontariat I had some real misgivings about going to visit them. The thought of people in Belgium and France sponsoring children made me doubt that the organisation could actually be empowering it beneficiaries to take control of their lives, I had visions of sad advertising campaigns being run in Europe and people having their heart strings tugged like so many charities do, also how many people could the organisation help through sponsorship alone and how on earth was it a sustainable model.

Well, I have to say that I was totally wrong. I still have questions about the charity model and the organisations sustainability, I feel that there is still more that can be done to generate income and also help their beneficiaries to get the most out of the services on offer.

Ok lets look at what it was that changed my mind….
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I am currently in India visiting and working with a range of social projects. I will be putting some information up about the projects that I am visiting, starting with the Indian Council for Child Welfare.

ICCW is a non-profit non-government organisation that is committed to ensuring that children’s basic human rights are protected within the state of Tamil Nadu.

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