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EBE leads development of National Citizens Service Targeted Programme

Posted on by Chris Shaw

Founded in 2009, the National Citizen Service (NCS) is a voluntary personal and social development programme for 16–17 year olds in England funded largely by money from the UK Government. It was formally announced in 2010 by Prime Minister David Cameron. NCS became a Royal Charter Body in 2018. NCS is designed especially for 16 and 17 year olds, the NCS experience exists to engage, unite and empower young people, building their confidence so they can go out into the world and achieve their dreams, no matter where they are from or what their background is.

In 2023, the NCS Trust announced a significant investment to help young people, focusing on community-based experiences at a local level. These new experiences were aimed at complementing NCS’ existing away from home residential offering by providing more opportunities for teenagers to engage in local activities that foster skills development, deepen their understanding of the community, and empower them to contribute positively to its improvement.  The grants will also support organisations that cater to specific groups of young people who may not have participated in previous NCS initiatives.  The ‘Targeted Grants’ programme has been designed for scaling your existing interventions, or trialing a new innovation, with targeted groups of young people. NCS agreed to offer a variety of larger and smaller grants, creating opportunities for national or regional organisations, alongside small grassroots organisations.

It is this against this activity strand that Ethical Business Exchange worked alongside Bangladesh Youth and Cultural Shomiti to formulate a partnership of Leicester based delivery partners to bid for funding, which was successful towards the end of 2023 with an award of £92,000 being made. Partners include Highfields Centre, Youth Education Project and EAVA FM. EBE has subsequently delivered an impact and evaluation study of the highly successful project.

EBE selected as lead evaluator for University of Leicester VentureVersity Project

Posted on by Chris Shaw

A partnership involving Leicester StartUps CiC and EBE has successfully bid to deliver and evaluate an innovative programme designed to accelerate academic research and IP through to commercial propositions. EBE will conduct a longitudinal evaluation of the project and produce a project toolkit for use elsewhere in the UK.

VentureVersity is funded through Research England and will deliver a pioneering approach to creating new products, services and business from university ideas. The three Universities of Leicestershire are amongst a small number of projects to be selected by Research England to deliver on novel approaches to commercialise their research Connecting capability fund – UKRI .

VentureVersity will create new accelerated pathways for university Intellectual property and ideas. The University of Leicester, Loughborough University and De Montfort will share IP and ideas with a community of businesses, graduates and students adopting an open innovation approach to sharing, testing, and developing business concepts. The target is to deliver novel products, services and businesses and energise the innovation culture of the city and county. The project will build connections with businesses and create opportunities for students to deploy and develop skills, build experience and catalyse enterprise.

ExSel Project Kicks Off with First Learning Event

Posted on by Chris Shaw

After months of planning and application, the ExSel project was up and running on the 30th November with the first of a number of learning events featuring Leicester Startups CiC founder, Ben Ravilious. Ben described his journey from businessman to ‘accidental social entrepreneur’ and talked about the creation of the Phoenix Yard based co-working space and the highly successful accelerator programme the CiC now runs.. 

An acronym for Expand Social Enterprise in Leicester, ExSel is funded initially for 18 months via Leicester City Council’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund.  The project’s primary objective is to promote and support the local social economy, including cooperatives, social enterprises, and community-based initiatives. It aims to create awareness, facilitate networking, and provide resources to empower local social economy actors.

The project will be managed and delivered by staff from Leicester Social Economy Consortium, and Ethical Business Exchange will undertake project monitoring and evaluation as well as help to develop the Leicester Social Economy Network (LSEN), the springboard for the project.

A key feature of the project will be the creation of the Leicester Social Enterprise Annual Symposium which will attract social enterprises from the City and strategic social enterprise development agencies, social investors and other funding bodies, from across the UK.

 

EBE Director wins Fundraiser of the Year at VAL Awards

Posted on by Chris Shaw

EBE Director, Chris Shaw, was honoured at the recent Voluntary Action Leicestershire Awards evening, where he picked up the fundraiser of the year trophy for Leicester and Leicestershire. Sponsored by PPL, the award recognises contributions to the fundraising profession and performance throughout the year. Chris fought off stiff competition from fellow nominees, Darren Bradbury (Furnley House) and Arif Vorjai (Help the Homeless), but with £750k and counting incoming this year, it was a tall order to topple!

Chris dedicated his win to the various groups he supports, especially those grassroots organisations in the some of the most deprived parts of the city and county.

 

The Power of Positive Partnerships

Posted on by riturmi

The old adage “two brains are better than one” is no more true than when organisations partner with each other to design, develop and deliver collaborative ventures. A classic example is that of the Positive Communities consortium that came together in Leicester in early 2021 to assess the feasibility of bidding for a Community Renewal Fund grant from Leicester City Council.

Ethical Business Exchange was at the heart of a process that brought together 12 grassroots organisations who wanted to tackle some of the negative and very serious impacts resulting from Covid-19: mental health decline, domestic abuse, job losses and business closures. There is a second old adage which is often used in relation to funding, that “a funding partnership is the suspension of mutual hostilities by organisations simply to achieve the acquisition of money”!

As far as the Positive Communities partnership was concerned, nothing was further from the truth. Each organisation that bought into the project did so because they wanted the best for their community, and they wanted to learn from others and share their experiences, truly a positive partnership.

The upside of the partnership, of course, was that it secured £500k+ and was able to support more than 800 people who really needed help.

A further upside is that some of the partners have come together again to develop Positive Communities 2 to bid for UK Shared Prosperity Funding support. And the good news is, that application has also been approved, meaning the consortium will be able to offer support to a further 500 people over the next 18 months.

At the start of this Blog, I used the term ‘grassroots’, and it’s worth ending this piece with a definition of what that word actually means. At a very basic level, a grassroots organisation is one that works within the heart of its community to meet the needs of people who live there. It will be community led, and those involved will have ‘lived experience’ of the problems and issues the organisation is trying to tackle. It will also be well placed to develop wider links, ideally with other local organisations, and strategic bodies such as local authorities or bigger NGOs, which can give it some influence in terms of advocating policy making and change.

Let’s do something good together

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