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Sharing the Success

Posted 26th March '10

CREATE were honoured today as an inspirational social enterprise as key note speakers at the Sharing the Success Awards in Leeds.

The awards, presented by the Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, were hosted by Leeds Local Enterprise Growth Initiative and UnLtd. The awards, Sharing the Success, celebrated the work of local social enterprises in delivering transformative businesses in some of the most deprived and challenging areas of the city.

Sharing the Success is the title for the Leeds Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI). This programme has been created using government funding to help regenerate some areas within Leeds. It is sometimes also called Leeds LEGI.

The programme involves more than 30 partners who are delivering a number of excellent projects using enterprise to help boost prospects, create jobs and help develop new and existing businesses in Leeds.

For the past three years, UnLtd has partnered with the Leeds LEGI Sharing the Success Programme to support the development of social entrepreneurship across the most economically disadvantaged areas in Leeds.

The overall aim was to support the ideas of those who wanted to develop a social enterprise or community based project that would deliver social impact, encouraging those from some of the most deprived areas of Leeds to become more entrepreneurial, thus creating social and economic change.

At the end of the programme, over 70 Award Winners have been supported in setting up a diverse range of social ventures and community initiatives, more than 30 jobs have been created and we have invested over £260,000 of funding in the Leeds LEGI area.

Presenting the awards Hilary Benn praised those who were ‘do-ers and not just talkers’, those who had a vision for social change and made that vision a living reality. In the presence of some of the most innovative and driven social entrepreneurs in the region CREATE was chosen to deliver the key note address. Gary Stott and Sarah Dunwell shared the story of CREATE form one order for one sandwich platter to a business, three years later, that turns over a million pounds and employs over thirty people in Leeds, Bradford and Doncaster. Sharing their story of CREATE, Sarah Dunwell commented “it is a privileged to be in a room with so many inspiring people and even more of a privileged to be chosen as key note speakers for this event”.

CREATE continues to grow its work in the region and is about to open CREATE Potential its Employment Academy which will see 60 former homeless people into full time work in the first year.