Aspire has teamed up with Flo’s, The Place in the Park to form one of six social enterprise hubs for the eScalate business support programme, which we at OSEP deliver in collaboration with OxLEP.
Aspire is a multi-award-winning employment charity, established in 2001 to tackle some of the most complex social issues in Oxfordshire. It supports vulnerable local people into, and towards employment and housing, as the most powerful way to break the complex cycles of homelessness, re-offending and poverty.
The other half of the social enterprise hub team is Flo’s, a community benefit society with a community-owned café, nursery, refill shop, community midwives clinics and more. Based in Florence Park, it opened in September 2018, and has become a popular place for people to meet, eat, work, play, create, and learn. Located in the middle of a park with a strong environmental ethos it has nature in mind and wellbeing at its heart.
The Aspire & Flo’s team are hosting OSEP’s Virtual Social Enterprise & Buyer Meet Up for Oxfordshire at the inaugural POP2020: Power of Purpose week this month on 18th November, and ahead of the event, we caught up with Paul & Sophie from Aspire, and Annie from Flo’s, to find out how the organisations have adapted this year, the impact of eScalate and the importance of social impact enterprise. >>
How has Aspire & Flo’s adapted during the pandemic
Aspire accelerated its plans to bring online more supported housing across the county through Housing First and housing led models, so as to provide emergency accommodation for young people and adults in precarious accommodation such as hotels. This included leasing and refurbishing 3 empty residential blocks in Oxford City Centre, which has resulted in an additional 35 beds to meet emergency housing need in Oxford. Aspire also adapted by supporting its beneficiaries to stay digitally connected and included, including installing temporary WiFi in the emergency hotels and loaning out c. 100 tablets and laptops, and through a new partnership with The Good Things Foundation. Aspire maintained all of its charitable support services and project activities throughout the pandemic.
Flo’s reacted proactively and quickly to the pandemic. As rooms were no longer being used for external meetings, Flo’s made the space available to the Isis Community midwives who doubled the number of women they could see in the community – taking pressure off the GP surgeries and JR hospital.
The new team at Flo’s cafe was due to open as a totally new concern. Staff could not be furloughed as they were only employed from April. The reduced team quickly took on providing a take away service which was particularly useful to people working from home whilst home-schooling! Together with Oxford Hub, Ark T and Waste to Taste, Flo’s created OX4 Food Crew preparing over 200 cooked meals delivered to those who needed them in OX4 area. This work continues, including providing holiday and half term meals to school children and to families with children under 5, and older people or those with ongoing health issues.
Flo’s Nursery stayed open for key worker children. Overall the centre offered safe local shopping at its refill shop plus friendly faces to those who needed advice or support.
Why was it important to be part of the team delivering the eScalate programme?
Aspire sees the nourishing, empowering potential social enterprises can offer our local communities and help realise a shift towards a community wealth building economic model; but there needed to be an infrastructure in place to help build and accelerate this ecosystem in Oxfordshire. The eScalate programme contributes towards this shift so we had to be a part of it.
For Flo’s it was important to both benefit from working with peers as a new social enterprise on the Oxfordshire scene, and to be able to share experience and support others as we went along.
What impact will supporting more social impact organisations have on our local economy and community?
It can help realise a shift towards a more inclusive and local economy that understands and cherishes community leadership and community wealth building, which is ultimately a more sustainable and resilient model for our local economy.
The peer to peer forums in particular facilitated by Flo’s/Aspire over the past few months have had very good feedback from leaders of local charities and enterprises. They have provided forums for mutual aid and solidarity as well as spaces for much needed reflection on personal and organisational development issues and a focus on potential solutions at a time of confusing and contradictory guidance, information and a scrabble for resources at local and national level.
How has the eScalate programme helped both Aspire & Flo’s over the last 18 months?
It has helped us to benefit from collaboration, particularly with Flo’s, but also across the partnership of hubs, to offer our social enterprise learning and experience to benefit others who are starting out on their social enterprise journey.
Flo’s has benefited from direct support through an eScalate grant which helped it start up its own cafe and expand its refill shop, creating new local jobs and better services. It has created 10 new local jobs and developed its capacity to respond to the COVID crises through leading the development of the OX4 Free Food Crew, expanding a community midwifery service with OUH, providing childcare for keyworkers, and offering a friendly welcoming space for people to get support – and do some of their local shopping as safely as possible.
Aspire @ Flo’s will be hosting POP2020: OSEP’s Virtual Social Enterprise & Buyer Meet Up for Oxfordshire as part of POP2020 on Wednesday 18th November, where social enterprises and purposeful businesses will have opportunities to meet 8 prospective local buyers, to gain a better understanding of what products and services they might be interested in receiving from local social enterprises, and how to approach them with their particular business offer.
The buyers attending will be:
- Bouygues
- Oxford Direct Services
- Blenheim Palace
- Oxford City Council
- Oxford University
- Soha Housing
- Midcounties Co-Op
- Amey
If you would like to join this fully funded session, sign up here.
You can sign up to all the POP2020 events on Eventbrite, here’s the schedule >>
