According to Lonely Planet, ‘Pollença is beautiful. On a late summer afternoon, when its stone houses glow in the fading light, cicadas strike up their tentative drone and the burble of chatter floats from cafe terraces lining the Placa Major, the town is like the Mallorca you always hoped you would discover.’
This could be true. I can neither confirm nor deny it, despite having just been there for a week. I was mainly confined to an apartment with a sick three year old. It wasn’t the most successful of holidays – BA lost one of our bags too. Yes, yes, I am aware that it’s the very definition of entitlement to complain about a holiday but there you go. I did at least discover that they don’t have Calpol on Majorca, instead using something called Apiretal, which is seven times stronger. Good thing I checked the label…
After all that, it was something of a relief to return to the office this week and voila, here is your news.
Enjoy your weekend.
Helping us
Right, time for your good deed of the day. SSE Cornwall have been named a finalist in the ‘Ambassador of the Year’ category of the Cornwall Business Awards and now need you to vote for them. I know you may not have had anything to do with SSE Cornwall previously but trust me when I say that they deserve your vote. It will take you about three seconds – you don’t even need to faff about entering your email address or anything.
You need to scroll down this page a bit to vote
Helping you
We can offer something back too: we’re collaborating with PwC for PwC’s Building Public Trust Award for Impact in Social Enterprise 2019 award (or the PWCBPTAFIISE2019 award, as some people are calling it for short). The award will recognise Klockor Kopior excellence in social enterprises demonstrating a positive social or environmental impact. One winner will pick up a prize of £5000 and two runners up will receive £2500.
A web of learning
Outside of all the democracy subversion, trolling and strange videos by Rory Stewart there can be some exciting and useful material on the internet. And very occasionally SSE is responsible for it…
SSE Yorkshire and North East are running an online Start Up Boost course for early stage social entrepreneurs. Two interactive and highly practical online sessions that will give your young enterprise – or even just the germ of an idea – direction and clear sight on how to grow and flourish. There are dates available in July, September and November. Find out more here.
Not to be outdone by our friends in the north, we’ve blown the cobwebs off the floppy discs marked ‘Fundraising Webinar Series’, given them a bit of a clean up and thrust them back online. Lime Green Consulting will be running five webinars for us starting on Thursday 27th June, covering everything from fundraising strategy to crowdfunding, trusts and foundations and events fundraising. Get involved here.
By gum
The only people I have ever actually heard say ‘by gum’ are people doing an impersonation of a Yorkshire accent. If anyone from Yorkshire could confirm whether or not it is actually common parlance it would help clear things up. I went out with a girl from Yorkshire while at university and I’m fairly sure she never said it, although to be fair I didn’t pay much attention to anything while at uni (hence my unqualified support for this campaign).
Why is this important? Because it’s Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber’s annual conference on 28th June. Taking place in Huddersfield, the theme is ‘Rebelling Social Enterprise Style’. They promise that you’ll hear from and celebrate those that are rebelling against the status quo in their area.
Torbay or not Torbay
Next Friday sees the first ever Torbay Local Entrepreneurs Forum, a unique way to be involved in supporting new business ventures in the area with a community version of Dragon’s Den, where anyone can attend as a friendly dragon and offer support. There will be two sessions – a first discussing rejuvenation of the local economy and the second the community dragon’s den. It looks like a fun way to spend a day.
Made up
For some reason every time I see the word ‘Clarion’ I think of the make-up department in Boots. (Nothing to do with any goth stage, you just have to walk through it in the Oxford branch to get to the sandwiches). But, of course, Clarins are the make-up people and Clarion are a housing group. A housing group with money to spend, as they have have two prize funds of up to £20,000 on offer as part of their William Sutton Prize.
There are two categories: The William Sutton Prize for Social Innovation will be awarded to an individual or organisation that has developed a ground-breaking new product, concept or service that will make a positive social impact on disadvantaged groups or communities. The William Sutton Prize for Placemaking and Affordable Housing Design will be awarded to an individual or organisation that has developed a ground-breaking design concept that will improve the quality of life and support the wellbeing of residents and communities.
Advice please
“What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?” is a staple of Sunday newspaper magazine interviews. It’s actually quite a tough one to answer; firstly, can you remember any advice that anyone has ever given you? I struggle to remember what I had for dinner last night. Then, you need to make sure that you don’t come across as a bit of a muppet – say something like “my great grandmother always taught me to help those less fortunate before helping myself” and you’re going to seem a bit worthy but saying something like “baking soda is the best way to get rid of mould” and it’s just that bit too practical. It’s a minefield.
This is all frankly a very long and overly complicated way of telling you that we’re looking for people to act as mentors to some our students in London. You don’t need vast amounts of experience and it can be face-to-face, on the phone or online.
If you’re interested, please fill in this short application to tell us about yourself and why you would like to be a mentor. If you have any questions, please email Harriet [email protected] who assists the SSE mentoring programme.
Game set and match
Matchable is an interesting looking platform matching companies and their employees with innovative, high impact skilled volunteering opportunities. They have a whole load of companies and employees across all sectors (legal, design, consulting, accounting, real estate, digital, finance etc) who are looking to use their skills to do meaningful and impactful projects with social enterprises. If you need help in any particular area, please feel free to drop Matchable founder, Foong, an email on [email protected] to see if Matchable might be able to find you a corporate to help.
Gone but not forgotten
You’ll remember from the last edition that our ceo Ali was departing to tour Europe in a Campervan (I heard from him last week and it was raining and his roof was leaking) but before he left he wrote a piece on the back of Community Business Weekend discussing how and why SSE is supporting community businesses, along with our partners Power to Change.
Question Time
‘What is the Youth Endowment Fund, where did it come from and who is running the Youth Endowment Fund?’ are just three of the twenty two questions that you can find the answers to on the new Youth Endowment Fund webpage. For those of you who need a bit more info before clicking the link, it’s a new programme that will fund and evaluate interventions primarily targeting young people aged 10-14 who are judged to be at risk of being drawn into crime and violence.
You can get all the answers here
Get the party started
Finally, congratulations are in order to a number of SSE Fellows this week:
Josh Stunell was recently awarded The Devon & Cornwall’s Police And Crime Commissioners, Commissioners Award, in recognition of his Police Custody, Schools and Prison initiatives through his organisation bthechange CIC, which individuals immediate well-being support and practical guidance should they find themselves on the wrong side of the law for the first time.
Anita Godson picked up Employer of the Year at a Disability Confident event in Portsmouth. Her organisation Lily and Lime offers real work and training opportunities for young people with learning disabilities through catering provision and she is now branching out into running cleaning contracts.
Finally, Suzi Godson’s social enterprise MeeTwo, an app that helps anxious teenagers talk about difficult things, were named runners up at the National Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards.
A hearty round of applause to you all!
