Red Ochre

Red Ochre are moving!

anna@redochre.org.uk — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:14:00 GMT

Red Ochre are moving offices to CAN Mezzanine, Old Street, from the 5th August.

Please update your records. Our new address will be:

CAN Mezzanine
49 - 51 East Road
Old Street
London
N1 6AH

Tel No: 020 7250 8305

Uday Thakkar, Founder of Red Ochre - Award-winning social entrepreneur talks about his achievements and vision

anna@redochre.org.uk — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:36:00 GMT

Uday Thakkar, Founder of Red Ochre - Award-winning social entrepreneur talks about his achievements and vision on the Diverse Ethics website. Diverse Ethics is a social enterprise which provides expert information, training and a consultancy service for public and private organisations.

Please click here to read Uday Thakkar's interview.

Ministry of Justice Social Enterprise Conference 2010

anna@redochre.org.uk — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:06:00 GMT

Red Ochre participated in a conference on social enterprise sponsored by the Ministry of Justice on the 4th of March in London.

Red Ochre had a stand at the conference that attracted a lot of interest from a wide variety of participants. From government officials, the probation services, the National Offender Management Service, NOMS, to organisations that work on crime prevention, supporting ex-offenders into work or out of homelessness and drug dependency or re-offending through to those that work with offenders whilst still in prison. Red Ochre’s support to other organisations operating in these fields and also direct interventions with ex-offenders was of particular interest.

Uday Thakkar, Red Ochre’s Managing Director, also presented a workshop on “BAME Social Enterprises – the missing dimension”. The workshop explored how social enterprise, and in particular BAME led social enterprises, were providing solutions relating to the crime prevention and ex-offender management agenda. The presentation concluded that the social enterprise model was applicable right across the spectrum from prevention to rehabilitation and should be given more consideration and support.

You can download the presentation here.

Beating unemployment through social entrepreneurship – celebrating the success of the ACE programme

anna@redochre.org.uk — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:11:00 GMT

Highlights from the ACES High! event.

If you can't see this video, please click here.

Encouraging people to establish social enterprises is a proven way to addressing unemployment and meeting aspirations. Red Ochre has a long and well established track record of supporting community and social enterprises start ups as well as scaling up existing ones.

Since May 2009 Red Ochre has been working on the Aylesbury Estate in the London Borough of Southwark. The Estate of around 8,000 residents, has 25% unemployed, an above London-average BAME population and, until this programme few (if any) formal businesses. Yet in less than a year, 14 social enterprises have been established with most of the entrepreneurs already making sales and receiving commissions. Some of them are now even considering employing others from the Estate to support their enterprises.

So how have we harnessed the obvious entrepreneurial talent on the Estate and empowered residents to make their own opportunities?

Commissioned by the Aylesbury New Deal for Communities (NDC), we delivered training courses, surgeries, workshops and one-to-one business support to 40 Aylesbury Estate residents. The recruitment of residents onto the Aylesbury Community Enterprise (ACE) Programme was initially slow as there was considerable scepticism about yet another support programme. However, by building connections in the community and working with people on their business ideas, we soon had a waiting list for participants.

A Dragons’ Den-type event was held in November and seven of the budding entrepreneurs took part following a tough selection process. The participants, most of whom had never presented in front of an audience, let alone an expert panel of judges, pitched their ideas for funding and continuing business support. The exciting event which was attended by nearly a 100 residents encouraged even more residents to participate in our support programme. Recently, we held a Showcase event at the Glaziers Hall where 14 social entrepreneurs displayed their progress and achievements. There was a mix of products and services, ranging from ethically produced clothing to an after-school chess club.

The event was attended by a number of other support organisations and investors. Many of the ACE entrepreneurs are already being referred to new types of support and potential funding or investment. We are also establishing a continuing mentoring support programme for the entrepreneurs. The event has created a lot of local media publicity which, in turn, has resulted in calls from communities from around London requesting participation in the programme.

The social enterprise programme is raising employment levels. It has also given the participants the business support, the practical skills and confidence to turn their dreams into reality. There is now a momentum of other residents looking to start enterprises based on the successes they have witnessed.

The model works!

The beneficiaries were also featured in the Southwark News, please click here to see the article.

For more information, please contact Penny Daly the lead director of the programme at penny@redochre.org.uk

ACES High!

anna@redochre.org.uk — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:32:00 GMT

Following the success of the ACE programme, NDC Creation has given Red Ochre further funding to run another course and a showcase event of the project. The ACES High showcase event will be held at on Tuesday 2nd March.

Our ACE beneficiaries will be there to tell you about their enterprises and how they have benefited from the programme.

For more information please e-mail penny@redochre.org.uk

Voluntary Partnership Awards

anna@redochre.org.uk — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:38:00 GMT

Red Ochre's Award Winning Mentoring Programme!

Penny, Red Ochre Director, was part of the 2010 Westminster Volunteering Partnership
Award winning team for ‘an innovative programme and a sustainable partnership’.

As Penny says, ‘The project turned the concept of mentoring on its head!’

Why? Read on!

The partnership was between the Department for Transport and Westminster’s Churchill Gardens Estate. Penny worked with them, and Time & Talents Westminster, to design and deliver a mentoring project for unemployed residents from the Churchill Gardens Estate, Pimlico.

Characteristically, a mentor is seen as ‘an accomplished, more experienced person who acts in the role of trusted advisor’. Classically the benefit in the relationship lies with the mentee. In this case, however, the pilot project revealed some fascinating insights. Unlike most mentoring schemes, the mentors benefited as much (if not more) than the mentees.

The mentors were a group of DfT fast-track graduates; they were action-orientated, fast-moving and highly qualified young people with relatively little work experience. The mentees generally were older, some had 25 years of work experience, all were unemployed and struggling to find jobs. The purpose of the project was to give them the skills and confidence they needed in writing cv’s, completing application forms and attending interviews.

The successful 6 month project resulted in over 50% of the mentees finding paid employment. The remainder have gained in self confidence and seen that progression is possible; they largely remain actively looking for work.

And for the mentors? They have gained soft skills they would have taken years to acquire. They have had to communicate and ‘manage’ an older and more experienced person, guide without pushing, support without propping, show patience and humility, listen before leaping into action, be responsible for another’s development – all qualities and skills needed in a leader. They also learnt about life beyond the privileged offices of the Civil Service. They gained all this in a short time and at very little expense to the DfT.

So a mentoring programme with a difference – and well deserving of its award!

Penny is currently supporting other mentoring programmes – the Capacity Builders Mentoring Programme (Community Alliance), Cardinal Hume Centre, FreshIdeas Events (for business women) and others.

Please contact Penny at penny@redochre.org.uk if you would like to know more.

Ex-Dragon Champions Social Enterprise

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:48:00 GMT

Doug Richard's of Dragon's Den Fame now runs the School for Startups. This is a rolling programme to encourage enterprise in the UK. Doug being American does things big - his presentations are to huge audiences and increasingly these are streamed so as to connect to even more people.

The growth in interest led Doug to create a half day event specifically for Social Enterprise at the Royal Institution on the 19th of January. In front of an audience of hundreds Doug spoke in his inimitable and amusing way about the fundamentals of starting a successful enterprise. A succession of social entrepreneurs spoke about their experiences and challenges.

A large part of the day was devoted to finance issues. Red Ochre's Managing Director Uday Thakkar shared a half hour session with Doug and discussed and answered questions on "What type of Social Enterprise are you?". The question and answer session touched extensively on legal structures and the challenges they present to financing and scaling up social enterprise in the UK.

Uday is seen below with Doug and also answering questions from the audience.

Social Enterprise Growth in Japan

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:00:00 GMT

A team of Japanese social entrepreneurs and members of the Japanese Cabinet Office visited the UK to get a better understanding of the social enterprise sector. In particular they wanted to understand the legal structures and how social enterprise is encouraged and supported by the government here.

Miho Matsushita the Deputy Director of Economic, Fiscal and Social Structure, Cabinet Office and Hiroki Komazaki the founder of the social enterprise Florence, accompanied by the First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy Katsumi Ishizu visited Red Ochre to discuss social enterprise legal structures, statutory support, funding, finance and strategy.

The visit was facilitated through Imperial College and a previous Japanese academic study that had been supported by Red Ochre.

The discussion was wide ranging and touched on the problems particularly on the short comings of the current range of legal structures and the problems these caused in obtaining finance and achieving scale.

Miho and Hiroki presented Red Ochre's managing director Uday Thakkar a small gift for the help afforded to them, see picture below.

Inspiring children about Social Enterprise

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:57:00 GMT

Uday Thakkar is one of 33 social entrepreneurs featured on the children’s web site - Moss Green Children’s Books. Each of the entrepreneurs was asked to write about their journey into social enterprise and the books that inspired them as children. Uday’s journey can be found at:

http://www.mossgreenchildrensbooks.co.uk/3086/social-enterprise-interview-with-uday-thakkar-of-red-ochre/

West Sussex Social Enterprise Innovation Award 2009/10

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:02:00 GMT

Do you have an innovative idea that could benefit the community and/or environment?
Are you looking for an award that will help you develop the idea into a reality?

1st Prize = £5,000
2nd Prize = £2,000

If so, check out the attached guidlines and fill in an application form
Deadline for applications - 29th January 2010.

The award is open to any organisation or person in West Sussex
as long as the idea is developed as a social enterprise.

For more information, please contact 01243 777606 or email: esg@westsussex.gov.uk

Community Empowerment & Cohesion

anna@redochre.org.uk — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:11:00 GMT

Red Ochre participated in a Public Policy seminar on the 15th of March in London. The seminar was on ‘Social Enterprise, Community Empowerment and Cohesion’.

The Department of Communities and Local Government, the Social Enterprise Coalition and the Economic and Social Research Council have been running a number of seminars on different themes involving social enterprise.

There were three panellists/presenters. Uday Thakkar, the managing director of Red Ochre, participated as a practicing social entrepreneur. His theme was how social enterprise has been instrumental in creating community cohesion and community empowerment particularly in communities otherwise regarded as hard to reach or living in multiple deprivation. He demonstrated this using case studies and examples of the successful and inspiring work that Red Ochre has done in this arena.

The other panellists were Rebecca Harding from Delta Economics, who spoke about her recent research on the hidden social enterprises in society, and Richard Farnell who is Professor of Neighbourhood Regeneration at Coventry University who spoke of the research his department has undertaken on the faith perspective in community cohesion and empowerment.

A copy of Uday’s presentation can be downloaded here.

Green & Ethical Month - May 2010

anna@redochre.org.uk — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:04:00 GMT

Social Enterprise Workshop

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:01:00 GMT

Imperial College London’s Faculty of natural sciences: Centre for Environmental policy has once again invited Uday Thakkar to run a half day workshop on Social Enterprise, on the 19th January. The workshop for students completing their MSc in environmental Technology/ Business & Environment was a great success last year and resulted in a number of students to change direction into social or ethical business and also instigated in a dissertation entitled “Can social business values be developed within a commercial, profit maximising business environment, and if so, how?” from Ben Lewis.

CAN Mezzanine - Great offices for the Third Sector

anna@redochre.org.uk — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:11:00 GMT

CAN Mezzanine provides affordable high-quality office space for the third sector for only £333 per month per desk. Sold on a flexible desk basis, the space includes access to meeting and conference rooms, a full-time receptionist, post room facilities, full stocked kitchens and regular networking and social events, at no extra charge. We currently have three central London sites in London Bridge, Southwark and Old Street

See the community space for yourself, visit www.canmezzanine.org.uk or call Claire on 020 7250 8001 (Old Street), Martina on 020 7922 7702 or Stephanie on 020 7785 6212.

Charity no. 1104911”

Aylesbury Arena - 24th November

anna@redochre.org.uk — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:06:00 GMT

Aylesbury Arena - 24th November

What an evening! The residents of the Aylesbury Estate gathered for a night of tension and drama as 7 of the Aylesbury Community Enterprise (ACE) participants pitched their business ideas to a panel of 3 judges. Entering to the sound of a drum roll, each contestant stepped up to tell us about their enterprise – the production of funky laptop covers, recycling furniture, establishing an art space, photographic and video-graphic work, setting up a chess club, ethical clothing produced on the Estate and supporting disadvantaged people in Southwark. The audience loved it and the professionalism of the presentations impressed us all. Everyone was a winner – the contestants with their prizes, the audience who enjoyed a fun event, the Aylesbury Estate with new enterprises being established. As one of the contestants said: ‘Red Ochre has shown me that anything is possible, even on the Aylesbury.’

The Arena forms part of the year-long ACE project funded by NDC Creation. We have delivered a series of social enterprise courses and given 1:1 business support to a number of Aylesbury Estate residents.