Social enterprise success for kirklees!
Two local social enterprises have won awards at this year’s Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber (SEYH), beating off strong competition from all over the region.
The winners were:
- Umbrella Yoga CIC who won the Start Up Award for their work bringing communities together through yoga and making it accessible for people with additional needs
- Proper job who won the Social Impact Award for their unique LAB Project that uses theatre and drama skills to support and nurture individuals from the local community across Yorkshire and the North West. They were commended for ‘their stakeholder engagement and how they gather evidence in a number of ways’.
They were joined on the night by 3 other Kirklees-based finalists:
- Our Creative Connection who were also shortlisted for the Start Up Award for their work using photography to give people a voice, support people’s health and wellbeing, and bring about social change.
- Liverpool-based Employability Solutions who were also shortlisted for the Social Impact Award for their work offering flexible and tailored alternative education provision across Kirklees.
- and Cowlersley Community Out of School Club who were shortlisted for the Social Investment Award, having raised funding to buy a local disused care home and expand their services offering affordable, accessible childcare.
Helen Orlic, Social Enterprise Lead for TSL Kirklees said, ‘This is great news for Kirklees. We had finalists in 3 of the 7 categories this year and a quarter of the 20 finalists were from Kirklees, which is pretty impressive when you consider that Kirklees is one of the smaller local authorities in the region. Generally, Kirklees lags behind other areas, such as Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford when it comes to social enterprise, which is why we’re working with a partnership of organisations, including Kirklees Council and Huddersfield University to look at ways of encouraging more not-for-profit businesses in Kirklees – the types of businesses that are good for both the local economy and local communities.’
If you’d like to be kept up to date with this work and the latest social enterprise news, please email comms@tslkirklees.org.uk and ask to be added to our social enterprise network mailing list.