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Tag: homelessness

October 21, 2018

Empty Homes Week

Empty Homes Week is aiming to Fill ‘Em Up to tackle the housing crisis.

Newly-named Action on Empty Homes is urging support to allow local authorities to bring empty dwellings back into use – but one is targeting multi-million mansions.

Campaigners have called on the government to support local authorities to bring vacant dwellings back into use.

Newly-named Action on Empty Homes, who were previously known as Empty Homes, are using this week’s Empty Homes Week for more than a rebrand.

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October 15, 2018

Sleep in the Park

Join Social Bite’s Sleep in the Park to help us end plight of homeless.

A major event aimed at helping eradicate homelessness is coming to Aberdeen – with people being asked to spend a night in December in Duthie Park.

Josh Littlejohn, the co-founder of social enterprise Social Bite, is bringing the charity’s sleepout to the Granite City for the first time.

The money raised as part of the Sleep in the Park on December 8 in Aberdeen, and events around the country, will go towards the group’s Housing First initiative, aimed at taking as many people as possible off the streets and into their own homes.

Josh told the Evening Express: “We’re looking to eradicate homelessness, the people that will be involved in this programme will be known to charities on the ground, they will be people who have been passed over by the system, who landlords may not have otherwise given a flat to.

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October 11, 2018

Only A Pavement Away

‘Only A Pavement Away’ is helping the homeless into hospitality jobs.

The newly-formed charity is targeting getting 500 homeless people, ex-military personnel and people with convictions into bar and restaurant work in its first year.

A charity officially launched on World Homeless Day is aiming to reduce both homelessness and problems in the hospitality sector at the same time.

Only A Pavement Away (OAPA), founded by hospitality stalwart Greg Mangham, has been designed to help homeless people, ex-military personnel and people with convictions into work – while plugging a gap in the staffing crisis currently faced by bars and restaurants across the UK.

Homelessness charity Crisis worked closely with OAPA to advise on the process participants would be led through and to help ensure that they would receive all the care and support they need.

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October 7, 2018

Oxford University Innovation

Oxford University to support social enterprise creation through innovation arm.

Oxford University has announced that it is now supporting the creation of social enterprises by its academics through its innovation arm Oxford University Innovation (OUI).

Until now, OUI has supported the creation of regular start-up businesses created by the student body, and ventures based on intellectual property from the University supported by OUI, known as spinouts.

Academics will now be able to receive support for creating businesses around ideas that may not be inherently patentable and will have the option of creating spinout companies focused on impact.

OUI has already begun creating social enterprises, the first of which will be announced in the coming weeks. Prior to launch, OUI built up a pipeline of over 25 social enterprises. To meet demand for the service, OUI has created a group led by Dr Mark Mann, Innovation Lead for Humanities and Social Sciences. Examples of some of the projects OUI will support include secure, cashless homeless donations app Greater Change and mobile and VR-based lifesaving emergency instruction platform LIFE.

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September 24, 2018

Soc Ent Pioneers

Four people who are catalysing social change in the UK.

Cemal Ezel, John Bishop, Cherie White and Alex Smith have been announced as UnLtd’s first four Pioneers: a dedicated and driven group of enterprising people who are determined to use their big ideas to change the world for the better.

Who are the UnLtd Pioneers?

Cemal Ezel, founder of Change Please: Since 2010, homelessness has doubled in the UK. Now, over 4,000 people sleep rough every night. By the end of the decade the number of UK coffee outlets is set to hit 21,000, creating over 100,000 jobs. Change Please uses coffee as a way out of homelessness; training homeless people to become baristas and provides a London-living wage job, housing, a bank account and extra support for people too.

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September 18, 2018

Give DIFFerently

Cardiff charity creates facility for contactless donations on the High Street.

With the advent and rise in use of contactless cards, cryptocurrency and digital purchases, there has been a marked decline in the use of actual cash on the High Street. This lack of cash and coins has had a knock-on effect on charities across the country who once depended on small denominations of cash for donations via charity collections points in stores. 

In Cardiff, an interesting solution has been found to bring the act of charitable donation into the 21st century.

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September 17, 2018

Jollie’s Socks

How The Big Issue Shop has helped Jollie’s Socks step forward.

Founder Ed Vickers reveals what inspired him to kit out homeless people’s feet across the country.

Socks are essentials that are often taken for granted – but take a moment to imagine walking a mile in a homeless person’s shoes and you’ll view them in a different light.

That’s what Ed Vickers realised while he was volunteering at a homeless shelter in Exeter as he completed a bioscience degree at the city’s university in 2012.

Fast forward six years and he is the founder of Jollie’s Socks – a social enterprise with a simple ethos. For every pair of their colourfully patterned and ethically manufactured unisex socks sold they send a pair to a homeless shelter near you.

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September 13, 2018

Hotel School

Suite dreams: checking in to Hotel School.

A top London hotel and a charity have launched a school where homeless people are taught hospitality skills to get them ready for work. Lucy Purdy from positive.news checks in …

Just a few hundred metres apart in London’s bustling Belgravia, two buildings have been sheltering people for decades. At The Goring hotel it’s been well-to-do guests – frequently royalty – and at The Passage centre, vulnerable and homeless men and women, up to 200 every day.

Last year, the two joined forces to launch Hotel School. The main course? A hands-on, 10-week series of classes and one-to-one sessions, in which homeless and vulnerable people are taught hospitality skills. As well as introducing them to work in service, kitchen, housekeeping and reception, Hotel School serves up work experience placements with some of London’s best hotels and restaurants. There are also introductions to potential employers, and mentoring to help students stick at jobs once they secure them.

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September 6, 2018

Reach

Meet the Sheffield social enterprise using shipping containers to tackle the housing crisis.

A Sheffield-based social enterprise is hoping to navigate the rocky waters of the UK housing market, by creating affordable 1, 2 and 3-bedroom homes from shipping containers.

Inspired by an episode of Grand Designs, former police officer Jon Johnson set up REACH – Recycled, Environmental, Affordable Container Homes – in January 2017. Following a small grant from charity UnLtd, the social enterprise built a prototype which it is currently showing off to interested parties from around the UK. Johnson believes it can build 6,000 units a year, helping to plug the housing shortfall and creating genuinely affordable homes.

Just 1.4 per cent of homes in large developments approved by planners in Sheffield in 2016 and 2017 met the government’s affordable definition. In Manchester, it was literally none.

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August 7, 2018

Lincolnshire Street Outreach Team

This charity is using a drone to find rural rough sleepers.

P3’s Lincolnshire Street Outreach Team will bring the tech to Lincolnshire skies from this week.

Rough sleeping is not just a problem limited to urban areas, in fact rural homelessness can be even harder to spot.

Of the estimated 6,270 households classed as homeless in the countryside by The Institute for Public Policy Research, many are living in outhouses, tents and other makeshift shelters.

That makes people difficult to spot over large distances for outreach teams looking to provide help and connect them with the service they need.

Charity P3 have turned to technology to combat this problem with a £600 drone.

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