Member Article

Sunderland's SES land grant to help women into work

Social enterprise business support firm SES has secured a grant to help more women out of poverty and into work after winning a national online vote.

Sunderland-based SES, which has more than 30 years experience working with hard-pressed communities in the region, is one of just eight organisations across the UK to be awarded the RBS Inspiring Women in Enterprise Grant.

SES will now use the grant to launch Women Out Of Poverty Into Enterprise (Woopie), with the aim of helping 40 disadvantaged women from across Tyne and Wear start their own business.

On the road to helping the new businesses get off the ground, the team at SES plan to work with 120 women who live in social housing, are in receipt of benefits or are facing financial hardship, to raise enterprising activities among these women.

The RBS Inspiring Enterprise initiative is all about encouraging a more entrepreneurial culture, from the classroom to the boardroom.

As part of this campaign, RBS has committed to inspire and enable 20,000 women, by the end of 2015, to explore and unlock their enterprise potential.

Mark Heskett-Saddington, director at SES said: “This vital funding will pay for our experts to help change lives. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who voted for us and helped spread the message about our bid, which has been successful.”

RBS are making £3 million available between 2012 and 2015 to provide grant funding to not-for-profit organisations that run programmes to support more young people and women into enterprise.

Thom Kenrick, head of Sustainability Programmes, at RBS Group said: “We are delighted to support eight more organisations with this round of Inspiring Women in Enterprise funding.

“Once again we were hugely impressed by the depth and breadth of the enterprise support that’s available for women entrepreneurs in the UK.

“RBS is committed to unlocking, supporting and nurturing entrepreneurial talent and we believe these organisations will help us achieve that goal.”

SES has over three decades of practical business experience in supporting social enterprises, and the growth of self-employment within the North East to help offer people alternative routes out of inequality and poverty.

The organisation believes this track record, as well as great support locally, helped to win the bid.

Between 2012-14, SES enabled 310 new business starts and 40 new social enterprises, whilst supporting 230 Social Enterprises that have a combined turnover of £23.5 million and employ 1,400 people.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .