Why isn't every week like this?

It’s been a great week!

On Monday our great new Trustee, Matt Joblin came in to meet us all. Matt is Director of Surrey Community Film Unit which is a social enterprise and the relevance of which will become apparent later…count the mentions of social enterprise below!

Then I finished our draft contribution to a possible bid led by Surrey Community Action for the County Council’s infrastructure support contract, and so we are now ready to respond to whatever may occur there (open tender or selected bidders only).

I also finished our bid to the Lottery for the Surrey Youth Enterprise project which has four elements to it:

• Running one day "how to" workshops for young people about self-employment, and social enterprise (delivered by people who have “done it” – not us)
• Providing business mentors in support of these young people trying to get started
• Engaging young people in setting up a website to provide information, advice , guidance, case studies, You Tube testimonials to young people
• Signposting to funding sources (Prince’s Trust, Fredericks Foundation etc) 

Our vision is that young people in Surrey should have a (virtual) one stop shop that provides this support service, but one that is well networked to other bodies.

Our new volunteer, Volunteer Manager (Shelagh West) is beginning to have an impact,  and we have 2 volunteers this week to work with us, and more to work on other projects.

Our links to Guildford College are growing apace. For example, some students there will be setting up our “100 focus” group, being a virtual network of young people with whom we can consult about issues; we think this is preferable for them to being invited on to our Board, which necessarily looks at fairly dry topics like business plan, finance, performance monitoring etc. There are 5 projects in all with the College…

Meeting on Wednesday with Business in the Community (nationally) about their United Futures programme which is a national version of our “4x4 project”. (Ours was first!) We are to be a case study for them exemplifying the benefits of links between corporates/business and youth organisations, and we’re invited to exhibit this at a BitC regional event (in Guildford ) in January (more details soon).

Great meeting yesterday with the philanthropist with whom we’ve been working to set up a social enterprise. The CiC will now start up in September, and we will be providing work experience for students at Guildford College on apprenticeship courses. The numbers will be a handful, but it will be a demonstration project.

And finally ..only because I’ve run out of time because there is more…we have set up a Chairman level meeting between Surrey Youth Focus and our sister organisation in West Sussex about closer collaborative working, and bidding for contracts on a sub – regional basis- Surrey/Sussex is 2.6 mill population.

Family coming over this week-end to watch Final of polo (like FA Cup) so let’s hope it’s a bit drier on Sunday.

Mike