social enterprise

Well its day two of the challenge and so far so good. Yesterday I took a slow and steady start to the challenge by buying an Observer from the Co-op Store on Harrogate Rd in Moortown and then read it while my son took a nap in the back of the car. The Observer is published by a Social Enterprise as the Guardian Media Group is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of the Scott Trust and the only newspaper group in the UK without a proprietor, the Scott Trust  also has a charitable foundation funded by the Guardian’s trading activity.

I then had to nip down to our allotments, the Gledhow Valley Allotment Association and pay our subs for the year and bought some Japanese Onions from the allotment shop to plant for harvesting in spring.

Later in the afternoon I went and collected my bike from its service at Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative and I had a set of lights and mudguards installed on it. Tomorrow I am cycling to work which does worry me slightly as the last time I rode a bike not for purely leisure reasons on a short journey was when I was 15 years old and still held some vestige of hope I might one day ride in the Tour de France – well tomorrow will be the Tour de Leeds rush hour traffic.

Today I have ordered a Jungle Snoozy for my son – suffice to say it is an aid to toilet training. I have ordered it from Fledglings in Saffron Walden which is a social enterprise supporting children with specific development and learning needs and sell products and offer advice to their families. I know Ruth Lingard who is director of Fledglings and an inspirational social entrepreneur who received the MBE for services to disabled young people. We spent two weeks together on a learning  journey to India visiting Bangalore, Mysore and Mumbai where we saw some great social enterprises doing great work around social environmental systems and opened my eyes to the possibilities that exist within the sector .

Tomorrow I hope to start on my reading list and give some early reflections on the challenge.

Fledglings website can be found here - http://www.fledglings.org.uk/
Details of our learning journey from 2007 can still be found here - http://unltdlearningjourney2007.blogspot.com/
If you are interested in going on a learning journey they are recruiting now- http://www.journeysforchange.org/upcoming-journeys