Twelve years ago, Community Housing Cymru set up an Award scheme to recognise housing innovation in memory of a special person - Pat Chown. Pat gave a big part of her life to helping others and spent much of her working life in helping to meet people's housing needs in Wales.
Gwynedd-based horticulture, catering and joinery social enterprise tells us what makes the business a success, and about its plans to grow the organisation further.
History of the Welsh Social Enterprise Coalition
In 2009, Wales’s Social Enterprise Action Plan identified the need for a ‘representative voice for Welsh social enterprise’ as a key action point.
Soon after, two large consultation events were held - one in North and one in South Wales – as well as several electronic forums with business support agencies, social enterprises and social entrepreneurs, to discuss the need.
There was a strong response and the significant consensus was that, while there were existing valuable networks, many were run on a voluntary basis and lacked the resources to represent social enterprises effectively.
The prospect of a representative voice was welcomed in these discussions. Respondents were particularly keen that a new organisation should be the voice of social enterprises on the ground, with strong leadership from a chief executive and board.
Attendees from the consultations formed a steering group - facilitated by the Welsh Assembly Government – and wrote WSEC’s draft constitution. Then, with start-up funding from by the Welsh Assembly Government, WSEC was established in 2010, with offices based in South and North Wales.
