We are delighted to announce that we are finalists in three categories at the Social Business Wales Awards 2022.
The Social Business Wales Awards have been run annually since 2010, as part of the Social Business Wales project, to highlight and honour the best social businesses in Wales. The Awards are linked to a national scheme managed by Social Enterprise UK. Winners from Wales go forward to compete with winners from Scotland, Northern Ireland and England at a UK level.
This year, there were ten award categories for social enterprises to choose from and enter, including four new categories which reflect the ways that social enterprises and social entrepreneurs have really made a difference to people’s lives in the last 12 months.
The three categories we are finalists in are:
Social Enterprise of the Year for Lucie the Porthcawl Land Train
Lucie the Land Train officially took to the roads in August 2021, but there was a significant amount of work done beforehand to make this possible. Whilst in the midst of yet another lockdown which had, for the time being, closed our established re-use stores we saw an advert from Bridgend Council seeking expressions of interest for a Land Train operator in Porthcawl. We absolutely loved the idea! We saw an opportunity for a social business that enabled us to provide new roles and opportunities for those we support, whilst significantly raising our profile with the local community and providing another platform to raise awareness of homelessness.
To begin with, a couple of our companions set about researching how much it cost to buy a land train. At the same time, we began searching for some information and advice on what would be involved. In a very short space of time, we developed and submitted an expression of interest. We purchased Lucie, used, and had her refreshed with new rain guards, PA system, etc. We funded these set up costs from a C19 Bounceback loan, together with some investment from our reserves. We partnered with a specialist maintenance team to ensure that we can keep her on the road and safely maintained. We received our licence to operate and launched with a VIP event in August 2021 less than 6 months from seeing the advert!
We have launched the service with an experienced driver who provides support to the companion team. We hope in time that several companions will want to undertake the driver training qualification. In the meantime, companions provide the customer experience, selling tickets, seating passengers, and managing safety on board. Lucie can carry 68 passengers in total and has wheelchair access. Running every hour Lucie runs five days per week, increasing to seven days during high season. We have also run some special events during the year including Halloween and at Christmas when we ran three days of ‘Santa Expresses’ raising money for other local causes too.
Building Diversity, Inclusion, Equality & Justice for the support we offer to formerly homeless people and our solidarity work
Social and environmental justice is fundamental to the Emmaus ethos and is central to our theory of change. We live and express our ethos of social justice as ‘Solidarity’: taking action with others to address inequalities. Our primary beneficiary group are homeless adults for whom we provide supported accommodation alongside training, work experience, structure, routine, and opportunities for development. Our companions (the formerly homeless adults we support) work in roles throughout our social enterprises regaining their pride and self-esteem, and challenging stereotypes about ‘the homeless’. Homelessness can be a very isolating experience and our social enterprise connects companions to the wider community as most of them are in customer-facing roles. Our enterprises also give the wider community the opportunity to meet and get to know companions, which helps to break down stereotypes.
In line with our ethos, we offer ‘solidarity’ spaces in our residential community for those without recourse to public funds. We use the income from our social enterprises to fund these places and commit to making available 10% of our rooms for those without recourse.
Through our Reuse Stores, we offer good quality low-cost furniture for a wide customer base, but we also provide ‘Solidarity Furniture Packs’ for households in need, supplying around £200 of free furniture every month. Furthermore, our stores also enable us to hold Solidarity Sales to raise funds to support Emmaus communities internationally.
Environmental Social Enterprise for our re-use and recycling work
The very first Emmaus companions were called the Rag Pickers of Paris. Our movement was founded on the concept of turning rags into riches, taking one person’s trash, and utilising it as a resource to be redistributed to those who need it. At Emmaus South Wales, we have been trading in re-use for more than 10 years, based on our ethos of social and environmental justice.
Our Reuse Stores sell on goods donated to us by our local communities saving approx. 160 tonnes from landfill annually, including 82 tonnes of furniture and around 10 tonnes (13,000 items!) of textiles and clothing. We collect around 1,000 items of unwanted furniture from people’s homes each year and offer good quality low-cost furniture and household goods for a wide customer base, with over 40,400 transactions each year. We also take our own waste seriously. We send around 30 tonnes of unusable bulky items for recycling each year and generate just 3.5 tonnes of ‘waste’ ourselves, 100% of which is recycled.
The winers for each category will be announced at the Awards ceremony, held in the Swansea Arena on Monday 10 October. Wish us luck! To see the full list of finalists, visit here.