Places for People celebrate Spark's social enterprise success

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Places for People celebrate Spark's social enterprise success

A Government backed project aimed at helping homeless people back into work, training and learning celebrated its second anniversary today.

The £2.9M Spark project is an investment programme designed to build and inspire organisations to tackle homelessness through social enterprise activities.

This is the second year that Places for People has sponsored Spark, working alongside Communities and Local Government, The TREES Group, Big Issue Invest, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and BT.

28 social enterprises across England have received significant investment in the last two years and benefited from mentoring from individuals and groups across the private, public and voluntary sector.

As part of the 2009 SPARK Challenge, Places for People has been working with Merseystride - a new type of furniture social enterprise – which recently saw the launch of Home, a pioneering furniture retail business that buys ex-catalogue furniture to train and develop people who are homeless or long term unemployed in the making and repairing of flat pack and catalogue furniture.

Merseystride received £50,000 from the SPARK programme as well as comprehensive consultancy advice from Places for People. A team lead by Paul Willis, Group Head of Construction helped to develop the business plan with an aim to make Merseystride a sustainable organisation.

The Group has also been working with and mentoring organisations including:

• Eco-Central Landscapes: A landscape maintenance business, staffed by and providing training, for people without secure housing. It enables organisations to buy a great service at a competitive price, whilst knowing they are having a positive social and environmental impact. Eco-central landscapes received £50,000

• ‘The Resettlement Agency’ based in Devon. The Resettlement Agency train and employ people at risk of or who have been homeless to recycle & renovate domestic appliances and furniture. They then sell these to generate funding or sell furniture packs for low cost rent to those moving into unfurnished accommodation.

• ‘Matt25’: A social enterprise that operates an employment agency to the supported Housing and Housing Association Sector by training and employing service users. The social enterprise covers an area from Birmingham right through to Blackburn in the North West. Matt25 received £5,000

• Wigan Housing Solutions to provide help and support to service users looking to find accommodation in which they will be able to sustain residency. They offer training workshops to empower their clients so they understand the responsibilities of tenancy and feel supported going forward to find employment and stability in their lives. Wigan Housing Solutions received £34,000

David Cowans, Chief Executive of Places for People said:

"These are fantastic projects aimed at helping homeless people back into work and training. Their innovation is making a positive difference to local communities and is helping to support people to work towards independent living and to achieve their aspirations."

Further information on the Spark can be found here.