How social enterprises are supporting LGBTQI refugees and asylum seekers – An Interview with Sebastian Rocca, Founder and CEO of Micro Rainbow

To mark Social Enterprise Day (Thursday 21 November) LNER announced a new partnership which will bring life-changing biscuits to the London King’s Cross First Class Lounge. The special snacks have been handcrafted by talented bakers at Half the Story, a social enterprise formed by two charities working together to provide employment and help tackle homelessness. Grace Enterprises and Green Pastures set up Half the Story to offer meaningful job opportunities to people who have experienced barriers to work, such as homelessness and addiction. By providing a Real Living Wage, stable hours and mentoring support, employees can take control of their future and start to move forward in their lives. Thanks to the new relationship with LNER, eight new part-time roles have been created to produce the tasty provisions for the King’s Cross First Class Lounge. Speaking about the impact of Half the Story, Baker Anthony said: “Half the Story has changed my life. I’d experienced homelessness and addiction problems and found holding down a job difficult. But Half the Story has not only given me a job, they’ve provided real and useful support which has enabled me to break away from addiction and live independently. They’ve set me free, and I can’t thank them enough.” Richard Judge, Head of Customer Experience at LNER, said: “We’re thrilled to be able to offer Half the Story biscuits to our customers. Not only are they delicious, but every bite also makes a real difference to someone's life. We're really excited to be working with Half the Story, helping to offer positive employment opportunities." About Half the Story Half the Story is a joint venture between two charities: Grace Enterprises and Green Pastures. Working together they have started Half the Story to multiply their impact and make an even greater difference in the lives of those people they’re called to help. Half the Story is a social enterprise employing people facing major barriers to work, including homelessness. The whole team is paid the Real Living Wage, and everyone is offered holistic support and mentoring. About LNER  LNER is on a mission to transform rail travel. Our new modern Azuma fleet of trains continue more than a hundred years of LNER tradition - setting new, higher standards in comfort, reliability and customer experience. LNER calls at more than 50 stations along almost a thousand miles on the East Coast route, including major towns and cities between London, the East Midlands, Yorkshire, the North East of England and Scotland.   

Makerspaces in Liverpool that bring creativity to communities and provide hubs for budding artisans and entrepreneurs to flourish in business has become the first beneficiary of a brand new social investment fund ringfenced for the Liverpool City Region. Livv Housing Group, a social-impact focussed housing association based in Knowsley, has launched Livv and Flourish, a significant social investment fund with £4.25 million of support in the form of blended finance available for social enterprise and charities across the Liverpool City Region over the next three years. The fund’s first social investment of £175,000 is set to ‘make’ a meaningful difference to a purpose-driven social enterprise that works across the region. Make, a Community Interest Company set up in 2012, unites and enriches communities through creativity, art and culture at its makerspaces that create places for makers and artisans to turn their passions into prosperity. Making social impact that matters Make CIC applied to the Livv and Flourish fund to support the development of their new premises in Birkenhead, helping to ensure the overall sustainability of the organisation and enabling its network of makers hubs to increase social impact. The social investment from Livv includes a blend of finance, a loan of £150,000 and a grant of £25k, funding that’s helping to make a difference to Make’s residents in turn, creating opportunities to support their livelihoods. That’s residents like Agnieszka, Paul and Cathy’s creative and entrepreneurial endeavours, real life stories, with chapters marking opportunity, collaboration and growth, working out of Make’s Huyton Village location. Budding entrepreneur Agnieszka Holubik opened Once Upon a Plant in May this year, the perfect place for her business to be located in to be part of her local community - and a home for opportunity and ambition to grow with her plant merchant and lifestyle brand business start-up. Sweet entrepreneur Paul Doyle had the idea for his business in the pandemic, starting out in his spare room at home. His vegan-friendly personalised gummy and jelly sweet pouch business has grown from spare room start-up to market scale-up with his venture The Tuck Shop UK. Animator and illustrator Cath Garvey saw the perfect ‘blank canvas’ for her creative business at Make - at the same time as being a place to enjoy working alongside other artisans, being inspired by them and enjoying a true collaboration culture. Liam Kelly, Make CIC’s CEO, said: "This investment from Livv will help to support Make CIC with its work across the Liverpool City Region. Social lending, like Livv and Flourish, is a critical part of making impact work happen in communities. Traditional finance options are often not available to organisations like Make CIC, despite the significant societal impact they generate. So thank you to all those in Livv who have put together this fund to ensure that Make, and organisations like ours, can continue to grow the impact our communities desperately deserve." Tony Cahill, Executive Director at Livv Housing Group, said: “Make’s hubs are places that nurture life-changing social impact, spaces where opportunity meets ambition and true collaboration. They’re spaces for ideas to incubate, for business start-ups to literally start up, to grow and to flourish into established business enterprises that support livelihoods. It’s in recognition of this genuine spirit of social impact that the first investment from our new fund has been made to Make.” Livv Housing Group’s social investment heritage Livv Housing Group’s new Livv and Flourish fund is offering a blend of grant and unsecured loan finance of up to £200,000 per application, with tailored support offered to recipients throughout the process from its team. It is ringfenced social investment for Knowsley and the Liverpool City Region, with the fund open for three years. Socially-driven organisations keen on receiving investment through Livv and Flourish can visit www.livvinvestment.com to find out more and express an interest. Livv and Flourish is part-funded by Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, which works to make sure that charities and social enterprises can access the finance they need to sustain or grow their impact. Access provides patient and flexible investment through blended finance and boosts the resilience of charities and social enterprises through enterprise development. It is supported by funds from the Dormant Assets Scheme, which redirects money from forgotten accounts to good causes, and is distributed via Access. Seb Elsworth, Chief Executive of Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, said: “The Dormant Assets Scheme puts forgotten money to better use, rather than letting it gather dust in inactive accounts. It’s fantastic to see how the scheme is making a real difference in the Liverpool City Region – creating jobs and boosting the local economy by helping social enterprises like Make CIC and the entrepreneurs they support. By combining grants with loans into a blended package, social investors like Livv can offer the kind of small scale, patient and flexible finance that charities and social enterprises need.” Livv and Flourish is the latest in Livv’s social investment fund portfolio, with over £5.2 million of support in loans and grants generating £222 million of wellbeing value in the last eight years. Organisations who received funding previously have used the finance to support thousands of people into employment. Hundreds of jobs were created or sustained, and over 50 new apprenticeships were introduced. Over 29,000 people were supported with training and developed new skills, while 28,000 more were supported with their physical and mental health. About Livv Housing Group Livv Housing Group is a housing business and more. We provide around 13,000 homes across Liverpool City Region and the North West, plus apprenticeships, training, health and local projects to build flourishing communities. We’re positive, respectful partners who take the lead, do what we say and help others to unlock their potential. About Make CIC Make CIC is a social enterprise, founded in 2012 by Kirsten Little and Liam Kelly. It supports its residents to turn their passion into prosperity by providing studio space for people who might otherwise be working at home, composed of artists, makers, creatives and small businesses. It runs a programme of workshops, public classes and courses, exhibitions and support, across sites in Birkenhead, Liverpool’s North Docks and Knowsley’s Huyton Village, which are collectively home to over 147 residents.

Today (21 November) we mark Social Enterprise Day - a time to raise awareness and understanding of our global movement - with new research that shows the impact of business putting people and planet first. Unlike traditional businesses, social enterprises reinvest profits in vital missions, from bringing communities together and creating employment opportunities to tackling environmental issues and stimulating local economies. New analysis on our Social Enterprise Knowledge Centre provides regional breakdowns of our sector across the country - overall painting a vibrant picture of the many and varied social enterprises from Cornwall to Cumbria, driving positive change despite complex economic challenges. We’re proud to shine a spotlight on the great work of our movement. Read the new research