Enabling Economic Independence:The Impact of Social Entrepreneurship

The inside view from the outside.

Today I put a different hat on; to end my second week at Bridging to the Future I was invited to participate in their event titled ‘Enabling Economic Independence’.

The purpose of the event was to facilitate the coming together of people from an eclectic mix of organisations to talk about how they are trying to enable economic independence in their unique situations.

The event kicked off at 12pm and we were initially assigned a specific table. After general introductions and a welcome from Duncan Chamberlain of Bridging to the Future, the ‘conversation carousel’ began. Attending as Speakers, five people from five different organisations rotated around the tables talking about their experiences with social entrepreneurism and economic independence. This was fantastic in generating dialogues between the delegates: the general hubbub was conducive to interesting, challenging and insightful conversations with people I would otherwise not have met. The exciting part of these discussions was the variation of what economic independence meant for these institutions, and how they were working as social entrepreneurs and social enterprises.

Luke Coad from BITA Pathways discussed how they were trying to step away from government funded grants, to become a self-sustaining business and therefore be more able to support adults experiencing mental health problems on a pathway to recovery and employment without stigmatisation.

Ghiyas Somra spoke about how BRAP was trying to enable young adults from disadvantaged communities become self-starters through offering employability coaching, mentoring and a safety net to help these youngsters with their goals. Their success story is that of 30 people, 30% of them came to a position where they could start their own website, and then 30% of those were successful in putting these websites live and starting their own businesses. What was interesting here is that a lot of young adults came out of their programme because they had utilised the QEAS that they had developed from BRAP and found employment themselves; an equally good outcome!

Then came three very enthusiastic and amiable youngsters from a local school, King Edward VI Five Ways. Their story started four years ago when they were initiated into the SLAM! programme which was running internally in their school. SLAM! is an enterprise leadership programme for schools, colleges, universities and communities which uses cycles of peer to peep coaching to develop leadership, community projects and social businesses. What the students of KEVIFW sell are Saturday morning masterclasses, as well as sports, arts and science study weeks over the summer — and they do quite well out of it — £20 for a few hours work on a Saturday morning? More than I got with my paper-round back in the day…
These students definitely provoked interesting conversations: how reliant are they on the reputation of their supporting school? Although avoiding an internal selection process, is their success to do with the school’s selectivity when the students join? Certainly the most exciting thought: could something like this work in an inner-city state comprehensive?

Andy Lee from NatWest was enthusiastic in talking about his role within the Midlands looking at financially supporting social enterprises and social entrepreneurs. He discussed the problem of a lack of funding compared to how many people are applying for these grants. Doing some quick arithmetic, NatWest could theoretically fund about 14% of its applications. What was positive to hear is that NatWest is not the only financial institution doing its part in this regard, but we still need a whole lot more.

Finally, Paul Adams, the self-styled ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ from the University of Birmingham outlined three projects he was currently involved in. The event he has most recently become involved in is an event looking to collect employers who were committed to taking in NEETs (not in education, employment or training) to their training programmes or casual employment. This caused quite a stir and I have overheard plenty of conversations where people were interested in possibly committing to this themselves.

This two-hour event was extremely insightful from an insider looking into the different social enterprises we have in Birmingham. The food was more than tasty, and I think I saw a camera wandering around, so stay tuned for some clips of the occasion!

DT