Much Valued Recognition
Posted: May 10, 2012 Filed under: Community, CSR, Cyrenians, homelessness | Tags: Charity, Volunteering, Working with Businesses 1 Comment »The founders of Cyrenians pitched our tent way out on the margins of society. Our purpose is to be ‘out there’ for the people who are not generally cared for. A champion of unpopular causes. It goes with the territory that we struggle for resources. Or that people sometimes question why we are trying to help those who are deemed to have contributed to their own downfall. There are many causes and charities ahead of us in the queue for funding or charitable donations. That’s just how it is.
It was therefore with genuine shock and delight that I heard “Cyrenians” being called forward at last night’s Scottish Business in the Community Dinner and Awards to go up and receive the Social Enterprise Award from HRH Prince Charles. The particular commendation is for the impact our social enterprises make in combating poverty and getting people into a working life. It was also great that amongst the hundreds of guests applauding Cyrenians win were many people and organisations from the business community who are real and enduring contributors to that impact.
Standard Life provided the secondment that helped start our journey into social enterprise in 2005. J.P. Morgan helped us establish the programme that transitions trainees through our enterprise workplaces and into jobs. PwC has given invaluable business advice, especially in commercialising CORE. NHS Lothian has given access to the land for our Community Gardens enterprise. A team from Scottish Gas is helping us with processes and efficiencies. There are dozens of companies who support our social enterprises by being paying customers of our excellent Team Challenge Programme – too many to mention. And dozens more who donate goods in kind – like surplus food that we re-distribute to community kitchens through Cyrenians FareShare, which has been passionately supported for years by The Townhouse Company and Artemis.
Des Ryan receives the SBC Social Enterprise Award from HRH Prince Charles on behalf of Cyreniansrtemis.
Cyrenians Social Enterprises are helping 50 people a year into employment. More than 30 people a year are enabled to make other big changes to their lives by working in the enterprises. Between them the Farm, Gardens, Cook School, FareShare and organics recycling mobilise over 20,000 hours of volunteering, involve schools and dozens of community groups and support us in developing more environmentally and economically sustainable lifestyles.
After this becomes yesterday’s news and the tuxedo is closeted in mothballs we’re back to the hard reality of bringing in enough money to keep these good things happening for people in tough times. Let no-one think that the Award means we’ve made it! We’re certainly not fooling ourselves. We need – and make great use – of every bit of help we can get.So please be encouraged by this to help, and get in touch.
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The Joy of Planning
Posted: March 1, 2012 Filed under: Cyrenians, Miscellaneous, welfare benefits, Work | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, prevention, welfare benefits Leave a comment »Each winter Cyrenians gets everyone involved in taking stock and refreshing our vision and plans. We’re just concluding that process. As ever, it’s been fascinating and invigorating. Our trustees will sign off the up-dated Corporate Strategy in the next few weeks. And then, whoosh!
In November we had Professor Jo Armstrong from the Centre for Public Policy for Regions at our Trustee Conference. She confirmed what we thought: it’s going to be tough times for a long time ahead for people on the margins and those needing funding to try to help them.
Looking at our annual results in December gave us quite a lift. More people helped and with greater effect. January and February were filled with many great conversations with our customers, practitioners, volunteers, partner organisations, funders and allies.
To some this extended planning process every year might seem a bit indulgent and introspective. I need to say that the pace of day-to-day work in helping people and innovating new ventures never slackens. It somehow all gets done.
It’s been a real joy to share knowledge and insight with such a range of people who are passionate about making a difference for people in tough times and making Scotland a more caring community. There are some great ideas coming through into the plans for the future. And what challenges we have!
- Welfare reforms will push some our most vulnerable citizens into more fragile circumstances. We’ll be launching a raft of initiatives to provide more practical help as a hand-up, not a hand out (More of this anon)
Trainees at Cyrenians Farm
- With more people just one mistake or one bad break from losing their home we’ll try to roll out our unique prevention service across Scotland
- We’ll be stepping up our efforts to prevent the most challenging and yet vulnerable young people from rejecting and being rejected by society, and helping them turn things around for good
- With there being little real prospect of sustainable jobs for the least employable and a punishing welfare regime, charities like Cyrenians play an important role as advocates in preventing unjust decisions and helping those left near destitute, but our big push will be in helping them to become more employable and creating jobs through our enterprises.
- The second NHS Community Garden gets underway this summer at Midlothian Community Hospital with the prospect of the model continuing to replicate further, providing great places for communities to grow together in well-being
Probably our biggest challenge will be finding new ways of achieving all of the above (and more) with much less public sector funding about.
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Getting the Measure of Alcohol
Posted: December 5, 2011 Filed under: alcohol, charity, Community, family, homelessness | Tags: alcohol, Charity, Homelessness Leave a comment »On any given day Cyrenians has about 60 Key Workers out there locally, supporting our customers to achieve big things for themselves. For some it might be getting a home. For others, a job. Or the focus might be on improving family relationships, health or developing confidence so that they can get to a better place in their life.
About 3 years ago we realised that we were not as good as we could be at supporting our generic Key Workers to talk with their customers about alcohol – not unless it was the problem, in which case we have specialist workers and services. But drinking can be a problem that sits beneath. It can creep up. We may not always be aware of the links between our alcohol use and other problems or concerns. If our situation – health, housing, employment, relationships – is already fragile, high alcohol use is likely to make things worse. That’s why it’s important that we talk about alcohol and understand it well. Funding from Comic Relief has been used to make this better.
Our Getting the Measure website has now gone live. It is aimed at people supporting others and is packed with information and resources. We’ve also this week published the GtM Evalution Report by Create Concultancy, aimed at being of wider interest and use to agencies wanting to provide better alcohol interventions. I hope that these resources are an encouragement and of real use in helping.
On the 27th March we will be holding a one day conference, where we will be inviting local authority commissioners, representatives from Alcohol and Drug Partnerships, policy makers and senior health care professionals to join our discussion and help shape a cross-sector, preventative approach to Scotland’s problem with alcohol. Contact jennyziltener@cyrenians.org.uk to register in advance.
The social cost of alcohol use in Scotland is too high – and getting higher – particularly to young people and those with the least reason not to drink:
- The number of people with alcoholic liver disease in Scotland has risen by 400% between 1996 and 2008.
- 50% of Scotland’s prison population say they were drunk at the time of their offence.
- The estimated annual cost of alcohol use in Scotland is £3.56bn
We have a long way to go in Scotland in changing the culture around drinking. Getting the Measure will at least ensure that the most at risk are being better supported by more confident and informed helpers.
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More than ‘Just the Job’
Posted: August 24, 2011 Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, employment, Homelessness, welfare benefits, Working with Businesses Leave a comment »Typically, people affected by homelessness and associated difficulties face major barriers in getting into a settled working life. However, getting into a settled working life is often fundamental to their full recovery and resilience to repeat problems.
There is research evidence that:
- Over 80% of the long-term homeless are also long-term unemployed
- 77% or respondents were ready & willing for some sort of work with 97% wanting to work in future
In April 2010 the JPMorgan Chase Foundation began to support us to put homeless people on a path to employment and a settled working life using our own social enterprise workplaces to build experience, skills and self belief. Financial investment came with support from the firm and its workforce in Scotland through employee-led initiatives in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
In that year we’ve increased the passage of people fro
m homelessness to a settled working life from 14 a year to an average of over 1 a week. To some that might not seem like much, but each case is literally life changing. And the service to people is top quality – making sure that people are really prepared, ready and supported to progress in their working life. It’s not a quick fix or a box tick.
The people from J.P.Morgan have been absolute stars! As well as financial and business help, more than 30 of the workforce have volunteered at two of our social enterprise workplaces, Cyrenians Farm and the Good Food Depot.
MITIE Good Partnership Announced
Posted: July 8, 2011 Filed under: Community, environment, homelessness, Work | Tags: Charity, Environment, Homelessness, Working with Businesses Leave a comment »It’s been so so hard to keep quiet about this! But we can finally announce a ground-breaking new partnership between Cyrenians and FTSE 250 firm, MITIE, the strategic outsourcing and energy-services company, to work together in taking forward CORE (Cyrenians Organics Recycling Enterprise)
Our motivation for seeking this partnership was for the CORE social enterprise – operating since 2009 and now in profit – to get the investment and business muscle it needs to survive and thrive in a very competitive and fast changing commercial market place.
CORE now has serious ambitions of being a UK market leader in taking food waste out of harmful landfill and into renewable energy, while generating new work-place opportunities for Cyrenians service users and income for investment in improving lives.
The better CORE does in winning customers and turning waste into an asset, the more benefit to the charity in our twin mission of improving lives and the environment. So if you work for a business or public organisation generating food waste, send your manager in CORE’s direction!
The process of establishing the partnership has demonstrated that both organisations – despite the difference in size and sector – share high standards, strong values and a passion for better futures. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with MITIE.
Cyrenians income from the growing CORE will be channeled into our ‘Enterprise to Employment’ programme that Cyrenians has developed over the last year with support from JPMorgan, who have been brilliant supporters, training and supporting people affected by homelessness back into a settled working life. (More about that in the next blog story).
see more about the CORE story in last September’s blog
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This is not a story about cooking
Posted: May 31, 2011 Filed under: Cyrenians, Miscellaneous, volunteering | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Environment, Food, Volunteering Leave a comment »John had been in full time employment before he experienced his heart attack and had enjoyed married live for 30 years and owned his own home. As well as causing memory loss and diminished concentration, ill health had crushed his self esteem and crumbled his confidence.
John was referred to the Cyrenians cooking classes by a health worker. He arrived at Cyrenians Training Kitchen with his support worker. His nervousness was almost overwhelming. John had to be continually persuaded, for example, that the actual size of the vegetables he was cutting were fine. He was petrified that the sauce would be the wrong consistency or that the amount of tomatoes in his Bolognese made the colour incorrect or that his cake clearly hadn’t risen to the right height.
Cookery Classes @ Cyrenians Good Food
As the weeks of cookery classes progressed, John grew and grew with confidence. Constant re-assurance from the tutors and the evidence of what he could actually achieve brought about a transformation. As he relaxed and progressed to the advanced cooking course he opened up about himself and his feelings. He no longer needed his alarm to be set to remind him to do things.
His tutor summaries: ‘I think the class had brought him out and reminded him that there was a life out there and that people would be interested in him. He also discovered he was capable and perhaps just not as damaged by his heart attack as he thought. It was a pleasure to watch and witness his increasing confidence and to be a part of him feeling better about himself.’
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Looking for Great People & Ideas
Posted: May 9, 2011 Filed under: CSR, Miscellaneous | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Working with Businesses Leave a comment »Cyrenians thrives on having great people involved and a regular flow of great ideas.
Tomorrow we’re having a Thinkathon. In this instance it involves a dozen or so employees from Pfizer, (the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company), joining five of us to put our brains together and come up with some fresh, inspirational thinking about Cyrenians journey ahead. This has been pulled together by the aptly named Collaboration Company.
We’ve done this before with other companies and to great effect. It provides a great day for the business with a lot of team-building and learning going on. Their fresh pairs of business eyes and different angles of thought inevitably result in some excellent new ideas.
A team from Shaw spent a challenge day with us to imagine and plan new horizons for Cyrenians Farm. In the time since that enterprise has gone from strength to strength.
The focus of tomorrow’s thinking is on how Cyrenians can go yet further in working with business to create a fairer and more sustainable society. We want to go beyond philanthropy and CSR box-ticking and to imagine how commerce and charity can seriously combine our efforts so that its both good for business and business for good.
I said great people as well as great ideas – and we’re just now advertising an interim post to join our Leadership Team on Pam’s departure to become CEO at Providence Row and a new Enterprise Manager to take over at Cyrenians Farm, with Rob moving to fresh pastures. See the link below to the job opportunities.
Des Ryan
May 2011
Our Letter to the Party Leaders
Posted: April 21, 2011 Filed under: charity, Cyrenians, homelessness, Miscellaneous | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Environment, Homelessness Leave a comment »
Use your vote on May 5th
I am writing to the leaders of all the main political parties to ask about your continued commitment to maintaining and indeed improving the excellent progress we have seen over the lifetime of the Scottish parliaments since 1999 in tackling the causes and consequences of homelessness.
Scotland can be very proud of achievements to date. I have been visited by groups from Europe,Japan and North America due to the high reputation of our national strategies, our progress and ambitious targets to end homelessness. We can rightly claim to be a world leader in this. But the job is still far from done and there are strong signs of an upsurge in homelessness ahead and a deepening of the poverty that makes people vulnerable.
Establishing the Homelessness Task Force was one of the first actions of the newly established Parliament in 1999. Major improvements have been made through progressive legislation – with cross-party support – in 2001 and 2003, together with financial investment and strategic leadership from the Executive.
Of course there are many social problems to deal with, but how well a country protects its most vulnerable citizens from homelessness and supports them back into mainstream life is a significant measure of our effectiveness as a humane and successful society.
I acknowledge that homelessness is not a priority concern for the mass of the electorate, but I would ask you as leader to signal your support for tackling homelessness during your election campaign and carry that commitment into the life of the next Parliament.
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A Canary in the Coal Mine
Posted: March 4, 2011 Filed under: charity, Cyrenians, volunteering, welfare benefits | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Homelessness, Volunteering, welfare benefits Leave a comment »Appeals to our emergency welfare fund have quadrupled over the last few months.
We call it the Lesley Fund, named in memory of Lesley Sorrie who joined us from KPMG in the nineties and helped lay the solid financial foundation that has allowed the charity to grow and bring help to thousands more, and who died unfairly young.
Coming from KPMG, and a qualified accountant, Lesley taught us to question the value of every expenditure and ask what it did to progress our cause. It was a great lesson, not so much in being parsimonious but in always keeping our eye on our purpose.
Lesley was also one of the most personally generous and caring people I’ve met. She could deliver an icy blast to a manager who’d been lax with their training budget but always found a ‘creative’ approach if clients needed extra help with clothes for an interview or an alarm clock to get them up for their new training course: often rustling up some help in kind from home if Cyrenians didn’t have the money.
Today’s Cyrenian front-line workers apply to our Lesley Fund when they’re working with people who desperately need a bit of help and there’s nowhere else to turn. The things it does may not seem important to others or life changing but at the time the help can be fundamental to the person’s recovery or progress.
- Jill had done incredibly well to lose weight and get fit but this left her with none of her clothes fitting and while she got most of what she needed from charity shops the Lesley Fund helped out with getting a bra fitting and new underwear. Result; dignity and confidence
- Lea had got away from an abusive relationship and worked with us to get a new flat but needed to hire a man-with-a-van to move her personal belongings
- Having recovered from homelessness, John needed help buying a bed for his flat so that he could have his son to stay over as they rebuilt their relationship
Dean needed help with course books for college, Chris for the installation of the cooker in his new home, Marco to pay for counselling and Stevie for replacement glasses. And so on. Small things but imagine it in your own life?
Whatever is said, the State does not always provide, or provide enough. Not now, and less so in the imminent future as
Lesley Sorrie
the value of personal and housing benefits go down and living costs go up and local services disappear.
Little things like the Lesley Fund are like our canary in the coal mine, giving us early warning of bad things happening, which we should all heed.
Des Ryan
March 2011
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