The Basis Project blog

Understanding Social Enterprise – One-day training for RCOs



Is social enterprise right for your organisation? Are you a refugee community organisation (RCO) and in a dilemma as to whether social business is really right for you? Are you struggling to increase and diversify your income? Do you really need to set up a social enterprise?

Are you thinking of setting up a business with social aims and need to know more about social enterprises? Not sure if you should transform your charity into a social enterprise?
If some of the answers to the above questions are 'Yes', then this training is for you.

What's involved?
This is one-day introductory training is designed to offer you information and advice in order to help you identify whether social enterprise is right for your organisation.
This training course will also give an overview of the different types of legal structures available to social enterprises in U.K.

The programme:
• The definition of social enterprises
• What are the opportunities for charities to benefit lawfully from doing trade without changing their status? What are the limits?
• The differences between social business and charity organisations
• Examples and case studies
• Different models and types for social enterprises
• Legal structure available
• An overview of these different legal forms for social enterprises

Trainers
This training session is designed and co-delivered by Shpetim Alimeta and Sharmarke Diriye who are very experienced trainers and advisers on organisational development for community organisations and social enterprises at the Basis Project.

When and where?
Refugee Council, Conference Room, 240-250 Ferndale Road, Brixton, London, SW9 8BB.
Friday 11 May 2012 from 9.30am to 4pm.

How do I book a place?
For information on any of the courses or to book a place please contact Liam Cranley on: 020 7346 1297 or by emailing Liam at [email protected]
  

 

Single Group Funding uncertainty continues

Last year the report of the government's Commission on Integration and Cohesion recommended that Single Group Funding (ie funding for organisations working with a single cultural, religious, ethnic or gender group) 'should be the exception rather than the rule for both Government and external funders' (p406).

However, many organisations, including refugee community organisations (RCOs), insist that it makes sense for them to work with a single group and that this approach benefits community cohesion.

Though this argument has been supported by a High Court ruling last month against Ealing Council's funding cuts for Southall Black Sisters, as Clare Goff reports on the  New Start website, many RCOs still face an uncertain future.

The Iraqi Association has lost almost half of its funding in the last few years in what director Jabbar Hasan claims is a shift away from single group refugee organisations by mainstream funders.

He has urged the government to look at the impact of the move away from single issue funding before it is too late.

‘The idea that single issue groups will not lead to cohesion is being adopted by others,’ he told New Start. ‘But every refugee group has unique needs. We share some issues such as migration and housing with other ethnic minority groups, but we also have projects for the elderly and youth and if these are not funded as Iraqi groups then they can’t be successful.’

He said funding streams were now moving from single issue groups towards mainstream organisations that support generic issues facing refugees.

Asylum stories behind the headlines

On the BBC News website, Jackie Storer reports on a day spent at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in London.

Asylum is so often in the news - and asylum seekers so often demonized - that it is a sobering experience to spend a day listening to the personal stories of some of those individuals who are, whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, ultimately guilty of nothing more than seeking a better life for themselves.

Children in holding centres

There's an interesting and disturbing article in the New Statesman about the 2,000 children who pass through UK holding centres each year. Their imprisonment, as reporter Alice O'Keeffe points out, breaches a key UN Convention.

When nine-year-old Adeboye Falode grows up, he wants to be on The X Factor. "I want to be a singer," he says in a broad Irish accent. "Or a footballer." He says it with a shamefaced little smile, as if he is already aware that his life will not work out like that. Currently, Adeboye is under lock and key at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre, along with his mother, Aderonke, and his brothers Adedire, 12, and Adebowale, 14.

In order to get from the visitors' area to their room in the "family unit", Adeboye and his brothers must pass through up to ten locked doors and undergo a search. "They make you feel like a criminal, when you haven't done anything wrong," says Adebowale. Like the 2,000 other children who pass through the UK's immigration removal centres each year, they have no access to primary NHS care if they fall ill. The food they are given each day consists primarily of chips and rice: "It's disgusting." They have all been taken out of school - particularly worrying for Adebowale, who was studying for his GCSEs next year. He wants to be a doctor. "I just want to go to school and do normal work," he says. How will he feel if he is still in detention this Christmas? "I'll probably explode."

Government begins ESOL consultation

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has announced plans to focus funding for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) on community cohesion.

A new consultation paper (pdf) says the aim is to target funding on "long-term residents committed to making a contribution to Britain who cannot engage with other people in their neighbourhoods – let alone play an active role in their communities – simply because their lack of English prevents it," and invites suggestions as to how best this can be done.

The initial list of priority groups includes both refugees and asylum seekers who are still in the country beyond six months awaiting a decision on their status or cannot return home.

The closing date for the consultation is 4 April 2008.

Footballer Al Bangura saved from deportation

Following a campaign backed by his club, local MP, football fans and Sir Elton John, 19-year-old footballer Al Bangura was granted a work permit this week despite having had a previous appeal to stay rejected by an Asylum and Immigration tribunal.

Bangura, who plays for Watford, had told the tribunal in December that he'd sought refuge as an unaccompanied minor at the age of 15 having been trafficked to the UK from Sierra Leone. However, though he had been granted permission to stay in 2004, the Home Office appealed and, despite Bangura's claims that he would not be safe, the 2007 tribunal ruled that he must return.

As well as receiving considerable public backing, Bangura's case also received a sympathetic hearing in the media, including in newspapers not normally considered friendly to the concerns of refugees and asylum seekers.

Now, as The Times reports, the granting of a work permit means that Bangura will be able to stay, at least for the next few years.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed the approval of Mr Bangura’s work permit. It was granted for the length of his Watford contract, which runs until 2010. The Home Office spokesman added: “The next stage is to apply for leave to remain in the UK.”

The announcement that Mr Bangura would be allowed a work permit came hours after Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, said that the public wanted strong borders and a compassionate immigration system.

He said that while Britain was not antiforeigner, the public wanted stronger borders. “The public want us to prevent illegal immigration by attacking its causes.

“The public wants us to hold newcomers to account when they break the rules, deporting rule breakers where necessary.

“But they also want a compassionate system, which makes and enforces decisions fast and lets those we need make the contribution they can as long as they speak English, pay tax and obey the law.”