Celebrating Social Enterprise

We are celebrating and we would love you to join us.

Carriages, Oswestry

Tuesday the 16th of October

4.00-6.00pm

The shortlist for the UK Social Enterprise Awards has been announced- and we are on it! One of five organisations shortlisted for the Health and Social Care Social Enterprise 2018. So much has happened in the last 12 months it is time to celebrate. You can read more about why we applied this year, here.

We are doing this with an evening of drinks, nibbles and interesting conversation. This is why you should join us…

A question we have been asked a lot is what is a social enterprise? So on this evening alongside celebrating our journey we will also hear 2 incredible social enterprise stories....

Come and be inspired by Karen Lynch, CEO of Belu, the UK's first carbon-neutral bottled water firm. A social enterprise that operates to the highest environmental and ethical standards and donates 100% of its profits to WaterAid; over £3M to date, helping to transform the lives of 200,000 people since 2011. When Karen took over the company in 2011, the company was £1.6M in debt, and now has annual revenues of over £6M.

‘Belu is a fantastic example of how business can collaborate successfully to create lasting social change, not only in the UK but globally too’

Tim Wainwright, CEO, Water Aid UK

Karen’s story is an inspiration and she is a true champion of the social enterprise movement.

"Launching and running a social enterprise is a wonderful, aspirational thing to do. It's using your skills to do something amazing, but in reality it's harder than you think."

Karen Lynch, CEO, Belu.

Rakhee Jones is at the start of her journey, launching her product and social enterprise on Social Saturday, October the 13th 2018, in our JOLT shop. Rakhee has been a member of Designs in Mind for two years finding ways to live life with mental health challenges, and developing her own business- The Roving Loom.

‘Once upon a time, before Designs in Mind, I existed, I struggled to get through each day, sleep was a respite from being ‘fine’, each day going through the motions, clock watching until I could go back to sleep. Coming to Designs in Mind has helped me remember what it felt like to be challenged, to have deadlines, to collaborate with others; I hadn’t realised how much I missed social interaction.’

The Roving Loom gets you weaving beautiful textiles whilst quietly threading hope to unravel mental health stigma.