social enterprise – The Girl Who Whispered

So, I sent an email to The Princes Trust today. After speaking to a good friend of mine who said my idea was fantastic, it really encouraged me to make my dream a reality.

So, within 5 days, I should get a call from someone at Princes Trust to discuss my business plan. They might be able to help.

If you haven’t read my previous blog post, I will explain briefly. I have this big and very ambitious idea of opening up a hotel chain which has the sole purpose of helping the homeless population.

It saddens me to see people living on the streets, by probably no fault of their own. Yes, I know, some of them are probably drug addicts, but we need to stop pointing the figure of blame and recognise that drug addiction is a mental health issue or at least a form of escapism. I escape reality by diving into a good book or writing my own, but everyone has their way of dealing, and sometimes people turn to drugs and then get themselves stuck!

Anyway, I won’t go into too much detail here, but my aim is to help these people. And if I cannot go straight into the hotel business, then I’ll start off somewhere else and smaller. A hotel is rather ambitious, especially for someone who doesn’t have business knowledge let alone knowing how to run one!

So, for now, I’ll leave that there, I’ll keep you posted with what happens! 🙂

I was reflecting open this social enterprise company in Scotland this morning, they’re mainly based in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but are hoping to expand; they’re called Social Bite.

Click here to go to their website.

For those of you who don’t know, Social Bite is a social enterprise which sole purpose is to change social issues, mainly homelessness in Scotland. They’re a cafe/sandwich chain of shops in these cities, where people can just go to get a bite to eat, but people can also donate money to put aside for homeless people so they can go in and get something to eat. They also stress that 100% of their profits go towards charity, they’re soely driven on making social change!

One of my favourite celebrities gave them a visit once; Leonardo DiCaprio.

I think it’s a fantastic idea, I’m always worrying about our homeless population, and I feel that our government isn’t doing enough to help them, so my heart goes out to the founder of Social Bite.

Other musings I’ve had in the past, in terms of helping our homeless population, usually end up with me saying, “If I get rich, I’ll buy a hotel to home the homeless!”

But I thought this morning, why do I have to be rich to be able to do this? Yeah, I’ll work hard on my book in the hope that it becomes successful and maybe I can use the profits of this to this advantage, but I cannot just assume that I will be a successful author. Besides, I don’t want to be driven to write a book that is soley for making money, it’s for a hobby.

Anyway, back to the point, I know that it’s possible to set up a charity and I could go about it that way to make a change with homelessness (oh, it doesn’t stop with homeless, by the way, I have other areas I’d love to help in, environmental issues, mental health, animals, etc, but I can’t focus on all of them at once, I’ll go mad!) but everyone does this, and in today’s world I see there are too many charities, and some exploit an issue just to pocket a £200k+ yearly wage and then give charities a bad name! So a social enterprise may be a better idea.

So my idea…! Skip right to the point here, what if I were to get a loan (yeah, not a bank loan, I know, they won’t help!) and just buy a hotel business, and turn it into a social enterprise where people can pay to stay at the hotel, and if they want, put money aside for a homeless person for a night. I could offer employment to the homeless people too, work in the kitchens, work in the bar, work in admin, etc, train them up. On the premise that they move on to bigger and better things!

Only, the issue is, I have no experience working in a hotel, let alone running one!

BUT… I am seriously considering this! I can even see potential areas of expansion, a school/university for homeless, hair dressers on site, give a free space to social bite on site too to help them, a joint effort to tackle homelessness.

Although I start thinking up other ways to help other issues, mental health issues, drug addictions, reducing crime, climate change, refuges. But these are all possible ‘expansions’ upon the initial idea.

If there’s anyone out there who know much about running a business, a hotel maybe? Or can offer advice, support or ideas? Feel free to message me! thegirlwhowhisperedauthor@gmail.com

Off to make this book a worldwide best seller for now…