What do people do when they look around them and see problems that they want to try and fix? Teenager Ayve Couloute founded Girls Into Coding to get more girls into science, technology, engineering, and maths. Stephen Arnott of Beats Bus Records teaches hip-hop workshops to kids in Yorkshire. And a community in Liverpool created Kitty’s Launderette, a co-operative, ecological laundry and community hub.
All of these people are social entrepreneurs and community business leaders – ordinary people who started out with an unconventional idea that could make a change in their community. All are also fellows of the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE), which this week launched Trading For Good. Trading for Good is a five-year project, delivered by SSE with support from Power to Change and The Dulverton Trust, in partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, almost £5m has been awarded to provide funding, education and support to more than 650 social entrepreneurs and community businesses across England.
“There’s a cross-section of people in the world who will be intrigued by this place between mission and money. They’re the ones that we want to unearth,” says Alastair Wilson, CEO of SSE. “Often they’ll be people who come from a place of lived experience, or they might simply have a brilliant idea that will work in a broken market or poorer community.”
