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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 there is no cash to pay their wages.

What a farce and what a shame. Is it due to the recession and cutting costs? Maybe. Or it’s  a political decision as a senior figure in BERR hinted at; do I hear that there is a new flavour of the month?

It’s a shame as the centre was designed to inform and shape policy for women’s enterprise, something that needs addressing now more than ever as we’re caught up in the worst recession since… well a long time ago, take your pick…1945, the 1930s, the Long Depression of 1870-80s, or even the South Sea bubble of the 1720s.

Prowess, the UK association of organisations and individuals who support the growth of women’s business ownership, from whence the centre came, are working out what to do next. The website and policy papers I’m told, including the one I wrote on ‘Women’s Enterprise and the Benefits and Tax Credit Systems’ are still up and a useful resource.

I’ll keep you informed if anything happens.

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Posted in Benefits, General, Innovation, Research, employment | No Comments »

The Budget, the Recession and the magic of Enterprise

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

MagicTucked 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 say the least, I wondered why a magic venue was chosen to celebrate UK enterprise. It doesn’t happen magically; it takes a special amount of creative, business-minded determination and skill to be a successful entrepreneur and I was intrigued to make the connection.

On my arrival I almost immediately got speaking to one of the magicians who would later entertain the group. It turns out he began his career as a street performer in London’s Covent Garden. He had the innovative thinking and the determination to get him to where he was today. Speaking to other entrepreneurs in the room it became apparent that successful enterprise can be created anywhere if there is the will. Terry Owens spoke at the awards and referred to all the ‘doom and gloom’ that is on the TV at the moment. He said one entrepreneur had advised people to turn off their TV and not be swayed by the headlines. Terry inspirationally said to do quite the opposite. ‘Turn on your TV and understand exactly what is going on in your communities and right across the UK, watch the news, change the news and make the news.  An extra 1 million people are expected to become unemployed yet there is the capacity to create 10,000 new jobs with enterprise in 18 months.’  

Referring to harnessing the informal economy and helping people “go legit”, Terry called for the government to make changes, relax laws, invest in people’s potential and work together.

The Ethnic Minority Business Task Force sees enterprise as ‘transforming what appears to be a problem into a solution; to provide opportunities for everyone regardless of their background.’ 

The winner for the Enterprise Support Professional, Yosias Tadesse Negash of Ethiopian Community Care Centre UK who helps Ethiopian clients move from the informal economy to the formal economy was successful in large because he acknowledged that building trust in a community is the reason for their success.

Evidently, supporting entrepreneurs is not about numbers, it is looking at individual cases and seeing how their lives may be changed through business. Furthermore, supporting entrepreneurs is about empowerment and personal progression.

As the recession worsens and government increasingly looks for innovative solutions such as enterprise it is worth learning from the award winners why they are successful. That enterprise is not magical- it is already there; in peoples abilities but they need the support to make it happen. People working informally, out of need not greed have the potential to be the solution, not the problem. With the budget tomorrow it would be a shame if government missed this opportunity and failed to acknowledge the potential that lays  just beneath the surface.

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, General, Informal Economy, Inspiration, Leadership, News, Regeneration, Welfare, employment | 2 Comments »

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 are located in east London close to Canary Wharf and the City of London; many of our most needed projects wouldn’t operate at all if it wasn’t for the support of some of “our friends in the city”.

Over the last few weeks our building has been full of children having fun at Easter holiday play schemes – several projects like these rely on the generous input of our corporate supporters to survive.

This news of support and goodwill from business is rarely shared so it was good to complete a project recently with Heart Of  The City an organisation set up to help businesses in the City learn from one another how to develop voluntary and socially responsible programmes in community settings. We worked with Heart of the City to produce a report: Building Stronger Communities through Business Collaboration which identifies the successes of the Heart of the City Newcomers’ programme.  Fiona Rawes, director of Heart of the City explains the Newcomers’ programme in a short video. The approach is to encourage experienced businesses to get involved in guidance, support and mentoring schemes to assist businesss new to CSR quickly and effectively offer support to community projects.

In the video below Gill Parker, MD of BDGworkfutures, and one of the case studies in the report, talks to Fiona Rawes about the mentoring process and their work supporting an east London community project.

It’s clear that recriminations and groundless complaint will not resolve the damaged economy – but the current situation could be an opportunity for us to look again at how we want to re-structure and learn from what works well as we develop new collaborations between communities and businesses to build stronger communities and a stronger economy in a way that benefits us all.

The full report detailing the work of Heart of the City Newcomers’ programme can be downloaded here. More information from the Heart of the City Website - the video above is one of a sequence of short films by Social Reporter David Wilcox which gives more detail of this work.

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Posted in Council on Social Action, Inspiration, Research, Volunteering | No Comments »

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 an academic course since they left school. Students are encouraged to work together, sharing their knowledge, helping and supporting each other.

This year nine students took part in the research unit as part of the course. It is Community Links’ policy to make the research relevant to their wider work and also relevant to students’ experience. This year’s topic, “Supporting young people into work“ was an interesting and engaging one for the students to work on, given the recession. At all stages the students were consulted and supported in the work. The result was a well-written and thoughtful report with some very interesting conclusions. You can download a copy here.

Many of the students who complete the course find that this module is the most helpful of all the modules on the course, and of most use to them if they are going on to further academic qualifications, which many of them do. Staff have found that students benefit from the practical experience of designing and implementing the research with a qualified researcher from our in house research and policy team linksUK, and also from working in a group to write up the report.

 The students spoke briefly about their experience here:

The great strength of this way of teaching and learning is its practicality and relevance to the lives of the students, and the confidence and skills they gain from working on a research project such as this.

Download this year’s report here and read about last year’s report “Cash-in-hand and working rights for young people” .

If you’re interested in either of our courses in ‘Welfare Benefits Advice’ and ‘Community Development Work’, which are accredited by National Open College Network, then please contact Doreen Jules-Lewis or Cwti Green on 020 7473 9667.

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Posted in Community Engagement, Regeneration, Research, Welfare, employment | No Comments »

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 hard-hitting report, Close to Home, UK Poverty and the Economic Downturn, warning that things will get much worse for the fifth of the population already living in poverty, and for millions more whose livelihoods are threatened by the recession. A new poll commissioned by Oxfam revealed that:

  • 76% of adults do not think that Job Seekers Allowance is enough to live on
  • Only 4% of adults surveyed think that the government has done enough to help those that have lost their jobs
  • 86% of people say they, or someone they know, has been affected by the recession

Oxfam is calling on the government to adopt a six-point rescue plan, including cutting taxes for people on low incomes and raising benefits so that everyone, in and out of work, has a basic income that is enough to live on.

We support these calls – our own policy proposals are also available to download

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, Informal Economy, Welfare, employment | No Comments »

Saints Alive! The Politics of St Paul’s

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Brown and Rudd
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 the conversation about poverty that the Need NOT Greed campaign is part of?

The recent Living Values report, produced by Community Links, shows how the place of values in third sector organisations is what makes the sector special. It identifies a set of values held in common across the sector. Need NOT Greed, with its emphasis on the people who actually experience poverty and the need to work cash-in-hand, clearly cherishes these values, including making voices heard, transforming lives and generating public wealth.

Wednesday’s event was run by the St Paul’s Institute, which is a ‘Forum for 21st Century Ethics’. So, much of the talk from messrs Brown and Rudd was about values. The main point, hammered home, was that the market is still the best way to lift people out of poverty – we just need to tip the balance away from rampant self-interest, back towards a values-driven market. The vision of transforming lives through the generation of public wealth could be seen as a value shared by some of us in the sector and the higher echelons of government.

Both Brown and Rudd highlighted the need to be responsible, another value highlighted in Living Values, as key to the new, global, shared set of values needed to renew the market in a way that will defeat poverty. It would have been difficult for an event held amidst the religious grandeur of St Paul’s to avoid religious references and so the British PM dutifully read a long list of quotes from Sikhism to Christianity, all saying essentially the same thing – everyone should be responsible and act fairly to all.

It’s all very well talking about global, mutual responsibility. It sounds quite nice when framed in global terms. But at Need NOT Greed, we believe that it would be responsible on the government’s part to recognise that the majority of people who do claim benefits and work informally do so to survive – often out of responsibility to their families.

Gordon Brown talked passionately and, I believe, sincerely about the global recession being an opportunity to reframe the economic world in a way that will help the world’s poorest people. I hope he doesn’t forget the about ones down the road…  

For more on the campaign, visit www.neednotgreed.org.uk.  
Transcript of PM’s speech here
Download Living Values

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Posted in Benefits, Child Poverty, Informal Economy, Inspiration, Leadership, Welfare | No Comments »

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 give a quick update of what’s happening with the Community Allowance:

Proposal for pilots submitted to DWP
We have submitted a Right to Bid proposal to DWP to run a pilot programme across the UK. The proposal builds on the Government’s commitment to pilot the Community Allowance for people on Employment and Support Allowance, which was in last year’s Welfare Reform White Paper and outlines what could be achieved if the Community Allowance was available to people on any benefit. You can see the bid in full on the Community Allowance website 

Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Social Firms UK join CREATE
The Consortium has been joined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Social Firms UK, who will be bringing their expertise to the work on the Community Allowance.

The CREATE Consortium is now made up of:

Entering into the world of Social Media
We now have a CREATE Consortium profile and a Community Allowance page on Facebook – become a fan! We’ve also started tweeting on Twitter. under our username: CREATE_tweets. Follow us!

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Posted in Community Engagement, Innovation, Regeneration, Welfare, employment | No Comments »