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.
Award winner Kelly Davies talks to WSEC
Date: 15.03.2011
What does it take to run Wales's best new social enterprise? Kelly Davies (pictured, right), founder of fantastic football social enterprise Vi-Ability and winner of the Welsh Social Enterprise Start Up of the year, explains...
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Tell us about yourself...
I used to play for Arsenal Ladies and was also a Welsh international. I was the first woman to get an MBA in Football Industries. On my course I had an idea for a business that could tackle the issue of commercially-unsustainable football clubs and youth disengagement in deprived areas of Wales. Last year I created Vi-Ability which trains young people to work in key roles at football clubs.
How do you feel about the award?
“I was feeling fairly confident about the awards because I know we offer something different. But I didn’t know what the competition would be like."
What’s your advice to other social enterprise start ups?
“You’ve got to keep believing in your idea, even when others doubt you. It’s extremely hard. You have people saying they support you, but it can still feel very lonely when you’re working seven days a week on your own. Sometimes you do question if it’s worth it, but the rewards will come.”
Why do you think you stood out for the judges?
“I think we were set apart by the fact that we’re doing something totally different from other social enterprises. There’s nothing like this in Europe even. There are community football initiatives around and many people know the power of football - but no one teaches people how to run a football club like a business.
"We give young people at the clubs real marketing and merchandising training and experience and set them challenges to get their ticket numbers and sales up and it works. We’re being innovative on a number of levels. We’re launching a BTEC in football industries on the 1 April. We’ve got ambition.”
How have things changed this year?
“We’ve grown really quickly, and it’s been a rollercoaster at times. It was just me for most of the year. The first club we helped was Colwyn Bay. They’d only ever broken even before, but last year they generated £12,000 and got promoted. The first year we operated, we made £175,000 – we take a share of the profit from the clubs we help. There have been no grants.
What’s next?
"I’ve taken on 15 staff recently so we are going to get much bigger. We’ve been approached to move into England and will be meeting larger clubs. We’ve also got a Premier League ambassador now in the form of Blackpool player David Vaughan, who’s a Welsh international. There are other top players interested in coming on board too. Eventually we’d like to form links with European clubs and facilitate cultural exchanges."
Good luck to Kelly at the national Social Enterprise Awards on 30 March. See here for more info.
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