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Mainstream businesses and governments are not focussing enough attention on Sustainable Development Goal 10 ‘Reducing Inequalities’. This is a space where social enterprise delivers. Social enterprises – properly supported – could help reduce inequalities and build a fairer economy.
Over the past few months we’ve been researching how social enterprises across Plymouth contribute to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Kingdom’s Levelling Up Goals (LUGs). Whilst doing this research we noticed a specific issue on which we think social enterprises are uniquely placed to deliver. It is an issue that governments struggle with and private businesses do not regularly report on. The issue is inequalities.
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How social enterprises in Plymouth are smashing the Levelling Up goals
Here at Iridescent Ideas CIC and Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN) we often say that we think social enterprises are better for people and better for planet. Better than ‘standard’ profit making businesses, that is, because social enterprises put achieving a social or environmental goal ahead of, or alongside making a profit. In a previous article we turned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for help looking at this issue with an international perspective. This time round we are looking at the United Kingdom’s Levelling Up Goals (LUGs). Gender and our business advice
Gender inequality is a big issue for mainstream business - the gender equality pay gap will take 60 years to close, women remain under-represented on company boards and gender-based workplace discrimination costs the UK economy £123 billion a year. So how can we play our part in ensuring the social enterprise business advice we provide is part of the solution, not the problem? Over the years Iridescent Ideas CIC has supported a number of what I would broadly term ‘work opportunities’ for younger people. These have been as formal as paid internships, as informal as hosting a week of work experience and semi-structured such as student consultancy projects. Each experience has its pros and cons and has produced different results for us and for the young people we worked with.
Defining what’s important - creating organisational values - a piece of cake? Ah…
It’s OK to pat yourselves on the back occasionally! However, it’s obviously important not to rest on your laurels. We wanted to revisit our vision, mission and values to ensure they are relevant, reflective of our work, resonate with the team and are strong enough to underpin everything we do. Mel Tucker explains more... How social enterprises in Plymouth are contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Here at Iridescent Ideas CIC and Plymouth Social Enterprise Network (PSEN) we often say that we think social enterprises are better for people and better for planet. BUT, where is the proof that social enterprises are better? Amid the rhetoric of recovery plans and the cries to ‘Level Up‘ and ‘Build Back Better’ there seems to be a missing component: the role of all things digital
Has your community been destroyed, remade or re-envisioned by the pandemic? In one sense COVID atomised communities. We were reduced - 1950’s sci-fi style - by the ray-gun of the pandemic to singles or family units: locked down and stuck in our individual homes.
We've just published our paper on health and economic policy. Click here to download it.
Improving health and wellbeing should be a fundamental aim of the economy yet economic policy making - particularly at a regional level - too often does not include any reference to, or focus on, health. We call for economic policy making to be more closely aligned with health policy to help tackle inequalities, improve wellbeing and increase productivity. How social enterprises can lead us back to health and prosperity
COVID-19 is showing us that a health issue can not only devastate the lives of those directly in the path of the virus, but can also close shops and high streets, force hundreds of thousands of businesses to struggle and place millions on furlough or out of work. Never has the fundamental link between health and the economy been more clearly underlined. |
AuthorsGareth Hart Archives
June 2022
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