Mentoring

Spark aims to build and inspire social enterprise to prevent and tackle homelessness. One valuable component of the project is the sharing of skills and experience between people in the public, private and third sector.

On Thursday May 29, the fifteen Spark finalists will pitch their social enterprise case to a panel including five high-profile people who will mentor the best of the organisations over the subsequent six months.

Two of the confirmed mentors Nigel Kershaw, the chief executive of Big Issue Invest – The Big Issue group’s finance arm, and John Montague, chief executive of The TREES Group are two of the main drivers of the project. The other three mentors will be announced within weeks.

John said, “We’ve seen first-hand how social enterprise can have a massive impact on communities and individuals, offering training, employment and development, creating wealth and self-esteem.

“We want to sow the seed of enterprise into organisations that are already doing excellent work with homeless people, but know they could achieve more given the right support.”

Between June and November each of the mentors will work alongside one of the successful social enterprises supporting their growth and development. They will provide strategic guidance to help the people working in each organisation to grow the enterprise and to ensure that they see a good social return on money or time invested. 

Each of the mentors has been selected because they are a leader in their field. They have a wide set of skills including business management and growth, and all have unique insight into the challenges that social enterprise face. They also have access to knowledge and networks that can help the enterprises they work with.

For the mentors, Spark provides an opportunity to apply skills and learning in a new context, and the chance to pass on knowledge to increase the impact of fledgling social enterprises.

This kind of 1:1 work between the mentor and the enterprise reflects the key principles of Spark:

The ultimate beneficiaries of this type of mentoring will be the homeless and vulnerably-housed people that these organisations work with. Through this project, the mentors will concretely contribute to the spread of social enterprise throughout the homeless and other sectors.