Home / Social Enterprise / Social Enterprise
The government defines social enterprises as businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.
What that essentially means is that they are businesses driven by social and environmental objectives. Many commercial businesses would consider themselves to have social objectives, but social enterprises are distinctive because their social or environmental purpose is central to what they do. Rather than maximising shareholder value their main aim is to generate profit to further their social and environmental goals.
Well known examples of social enterprises include The Big Issue, Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen, and the fair-trade chocolate company Divine Chocolate.
Individuals with experience of homelessness face multiple barriers to work, training, and skills development. Barriers include but are not limited to insecure housing, substance misuse, mental & physical health issues, low educational attainment, offending histories and learning disabilities.
WinterWillow and Food4Food both aim to provide the opportunity for occupational activity, training/skills development and employment for the people who Wintercomfort works with. Surpluses generated will be used to develop the enterprise or provide a stable funding stream for the charity.
WinterWillow
We are in the process of developing a social enterprise based on willow craft which will offer opportunities for occupation, training and employment across a range of disciplines including conservation, design, craft sales, marketing, distribution and much more.
We are already producing living willow garden sculptures and will soon start the crafting of bicycle baskets and eco coffins.
WinterWillow plans to employ four service users in the crafting of willow eco coffins by 2012.
In addition to the opportunities WinterWillow will create for service users, eco coffins are environmentally sustainable. Other benefits include reducing crematoria emmisions and the absence of metals, lacquers and varnishes in these products, supports rapid natural degradation appealing widely to customers with environmental concerns.
Some examples of our early work….
WinterWillow has recieved extensive support from Cambridge University’s Students in Free Enterprise who have supported business planning and development. Susanna Longley currently delivers weekly weaving workshops and Roger Fowle a local basket maker is learning the craft of coffin weaving with a view to delivering an expert training program in November.
Food4Food
Food4Food is a catering service providing lunch time buffets to organisations hosting meetings, training or other events across the City of Cambridge. Food4Food delivers a comprehensive training program to people with experience of homelessness in food & nutrition, budget management/best value, stock control, food hygiene, catering and hospitality.
By ordering your lunch from Food4Food not only will you be supporting an expert training program designed to offer pre employment and back to work skills, you will help us meet the cost of providing a breakfast for those individuals who sleep rough on the City’s streets.
We have an extensive range of menus to suit all budgets and tastes.
