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Archive for April, 2009

National Policy Centre for Women’s Enterprise closes

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Launched in October 2008, effectively closed on 1st April 2009, the National Policy Centre for Women’s Enterprise is no more, as the government’s Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) still have not made a decision about continuing the funding for the second year of its contract. So the staff have had to go, as [...]

The Budget, the Recession and the magic of Enterprise

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Tucked away in a side street near Euston station lies the Magic Circle Headquarters - the venue for last weeks UK Enterprise Support Awards.   
I was invited to attend this awards ceremony by Terry Owens, the founder of InBiz Ltd,  the overall champion for 2008 and a Need NOT Greed campaign coalition member. 
An interesting venue to [...]

Building Stronger Communities through business collaboration

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

It seems like every day brings fresh news stories of economic gloom and financial difficulty. There is frequently an underlying cynicism with news coverage and comment citing the greed of businesses and individuals whose only motivation is personal gain. This one dimensional view however is is not the full story that we experience at Community Links. We [...]

Supporting Young People into work

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Community Links has been running a community development course for several years. When the course units are successfully completed, students receive a National Open College Network Level 3 Progression Certificate: Community Development Skills.
The students come from a wide variety of cultural, social, and age backgrounds, and for many of them this is their first experience of [...]

Meet Fred

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Today Oxfam, one of our partner organisations in the Need NOT Greed campaign, has launched a new report and action plan introducing us to Fred:
 The UK is fast becoming a nation of FREDs:
Forgotten by those in power.
Ripped-off by taxes and the benefits system.
Excluded from opportunities.
Debt-ridden because they can’t afford to get by.
Oxfam is launching a [...]

Saints Alive! The Politics of St Paul’s

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

On Wednesday this week, St Paul’s cathedral hosted Gordon Brown and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in an ethical and moral discussion of the global recession entitled ‘My word is my bond? Rebuilding trust - the G20 and beyond.‘ It was all very eloquent and even (surprisingly) funny but what did it add to [...]

CREATE: the Community Allowance: latest update

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Over several months we have been blogging about the progress of the Community Allowance that would allow unemployed people to do paid part-time work for community groups without losing their benefits.
Today, Third Sector Magazine has published an article about CREATE: the Community Allowance. Read it here (full article requires free log-in summary available) 
It would be useful to [...]