Mutuals at forefront of fight against UK reoffending rates

The Ministry of Justice has announced that charities, social enterprises and mutual organisations will play a key role in their plans to extend post-prison support and supervision for 45,000 short sentence prisoners. Currently almost 60% of these individuals reoffend within a year.

Hong Kong still business-friendly despite months of protests

According to World Bank global economy rankings Hong Kong is the third easiest place to do business despite the Occupy Central movement’s attempts to disrupt the city’s financial centre through months of protest. Hong Kong is ranked third behind Singapore and New Zealand. 

J.P. Morgan looks to social enterprise to tackle youth unemployment in Australia

Social traders – a non-profit social enterprise development organisation – has teamed up with J.P. Morgan to launch the youthCANwork competition, which aims to identify and develop investment-ready social enterprises to tackle youth unemployment. The enterprises selected will then participate in a start-up incubator programme called ‘The Crunch’. 

Social enterprise awards fever hits the midlands in the UK

Nominations for Social Enterprise West Midlands’ fourth annual Social Enterprise Awards are now open. The Awards celebrate the most passionate social entrepreneurs from across the Midlands who are working to tackle a variety of social and environmental issues. Nominations close on November 7th, with the awards following shortly after on November 20th.

Start-up savvy entrepreneurs called upon to alleviate poverty in South Africa 

The Spark Changemakers Programme is looking for 15 social entrepreneurs to take part in a five day accelerator course where they’ll receive intensive training to develop innovative ideas to tackle poverty in South Africa. Following the five day course participants will recieve up to three years of pro-bono legal, business and graphic design support. 

Crowdfunding world first

Intelligent crowd TV have announced the launch of a weekly webcast chat show that brings together entrepreneurs and investors from all over the UK. In Dragon’s Den style, entrepreneurs will pitch their business idea to an audience of UK investors across the UK. They will then be quizzed by a panel of industry experts live on the show and by viewer at home via Skype. 

£1.5m grant fund to support social ventures announced in UK

A new £1.5m fund to help social ventures attract investment and win contracts has been announced by the Cabinet Office. Jonathan Jenkins, Chief Executive of the Social Investment Business, said: “This fund will help us build on the success of the Investment and Contract Readiness Fund to offer more targeted support to ambitious social ventures who want to demonstrate their social impact more effectively to investors and commissioners to improve their chances of closing the investment deal or winning contracts.”

Photo credit: Lee Scott