Archives for August 2020

Ex-Time to Shine Derry charity secures £500K in funding

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Derry-based charity, Liberty Consortium @ the Playtrail has secured 4 year funding by The National Lottery Community Fund for Northern Ireland to take their social enterprise opportunities for young people with disabilities too the next stage. They will be opening their very own charity shop within the heart of the community as well as developing their ‘Tea in the Park’ initiative.

The Playtrail employee, Jennie Marshall, was a 2019 Time to Shine Leader initially employed to aide the set up of ‘Tea in the Park‘, a mobile cafe and coffee shop made from a converted horse box.  Tea in the Park provides meaningful work placement opportunities for young people with disabilities to their build confidence, help develop new skills and increase their independence. Within the new Project ‘Ready, Steady Go’, Jennie has secured a 4 year role which will see her continuing with Tea in the Park, whilst also moving to the new Charity shop in order to support young people and assist in growing the social enterprise and placing Liberty Consortium on the high street.

Jennie and her Tea in the Park colleague

When we asked Jennie about how the Time to Shine programme affected her journey, she said “Time to Shine has played a major role in helping shape the career that I always wanted to do. Being a Time to Shine Leader in 2019 has not only provided me with a number of different opportunities but has also pushed me to do things I never thought I could or would do i.e. public speaking or setting up a social enterprise. It has enabled me to grow as a person, learn new things and improve on a number of different skills. What stands out to me the most about being a Time to Shine leader is the support & encouragement I received from not only The Rank Foundation themselves and The Playtrail but also all the other organisations involved.“

Jennie’s manager, Gavin Melly, credits the initial Rank Foundation investment in the Tea in the Park programme back in 2019 with the success of their recent application to The National Lottery Community Fund. Gavin said “We are extremely excited for our new venture, being able to grow on our social enterprise,providing much more meaningful work opportunities for young people with disabilities whilst placing inclusion at the heart of the community.“

Amazingly, The Playtrail has been able to secure funding in order for Jennie to undertake a postgraduate Course in Ulster University in Community Youth Work. Jennie has completed her first year and has 8 months left on her new course. Jennie and Gavin are delighted as Jennie has been able to undertake this course, providing her with the professional qualification and all fees being paid for.

A final comment from Gavin, “we would like to thank the Foundation for supporting us back in 2018/2019 within the Time to Shine programme, it really has provided us with the foundations to grow our social enterprise opportunities, and create an amazing learning experience for Jennie and our wider team.”

We would like to wish The Playtrail success in the expansion of their programmes and we would encourage the network to get in touch with them for more information.

Website: www.libertyconsortium.org.uk
Twitter: @ThePlaytrail

Handling Covid19 – Social Enterprise Academy

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This week we are shining the spotlight on Social Enterprise Academy, a Scotland-based charity who provides transformational learning and development programmes for people and organisations working for social change.

Launched in Scotland in 2004, Social Enterprise Academy have helped over 18,000 learners to develop themselves and their organisations to create sustainable businesses and have greater social impact. Their programmes support organisations at all stages of development and focus on; leadership, entrepreneurship, social impact measurement, and personal development.

Since 2016, Social Enterprise Academy have been replicating internationally and now have 60 staff members in 14 countries around the world supporting social enterprise development in their communities.

We asked the team what an average day looked like: “There really is no typical week. Our programmes are incredibly diverse. They respond to client needs, so they happen where, when and how will suit the learners best. In Scotland alone, we could have a programme to support a development trust on a tiny island, or a social enterprise with hundreds of employees to restructure. We might be working with young people who are not in work, supervisors or projects leads, CEOs or trustees.  But whatever the programme, it’s the same high quality facilitators, always social enterprise practitioners, who share their own experiences and enable all learners to do likewise, creating space to have experiences, reflect, think and plan. That much does not change.”

The introduction of lockdown back in March meant that Social Enterprise Academy had to re-align their work. The pandemic means Social Enterprise Academy are now navigating what they have coined as a “VUCA” world – one which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The team has been focusing on upskilling their international network of teams and facilitators to deliver the learning programmes online. Not only are they learning new technologies and tools, they are having to relearn some of the basics of facilitation – how to connect with learners, how to manage group conversations, how to read body language, how to create safety in the room.

We asked the team how their service users had responded to the changes in service delivery.

“We’ve had really positive feedback to our learning moving online. Some of our regular clients have specifically said the experience was as good and inspirational as ‘in the room’ learning. We’ve taken great care to use the right platform, the right activities, right materials, format and so on.”

One of the biggest challenges facing Social Enterprise Academy is that the anticipated longer term social distancing measures that are likely to be in place for some time to come, mean that face to face delivery is no longer possible. Also, understandably, many of their partners within the Third Sector are now unable to pay for their learning and development as a result of the pandemic, so the team have had to find a way to deliver fully funded programmes.

If you would like to hear more about Social Enterprise Academy, you can visit their website or drop them a message at scotland@socialenterprise.academy. Equally you can follow them on Twitter (@SocEntAcademy) and Facebook.