The 1879 former fire station on Tooley Street will house a social enterprise bistro, wine bar, private dining and event business (including a training and demonstration kitchen); a social enterprise business centre and office space for training 40 social enterprise students every year.

The project will be called ‘Brigade’ and will be managed by De Vere Venues, supported by the Beyond Food Foundation’s Freshlife Training and Apprenticeship scheme.

It will provide a location for individuals who have experienced homelessness, and other vulnerable groups to participate in a catering training and an apprenticeship programme.

The redevelopment of the Fire Station is funded by PwC, the Beyond Food Foundation (through a grant from the Homes and Communities Agency’s Place of Change Programme) and De Vere Venues, with support from Big Issue Invest

“We want to create a centre for social enterprise innovation, combining private, public and third sector expertise, and a flagship for business and social enterprise partnering,” says PwC managing partner Richard Collier Keywood.

“The parties we’ve brought together bring that to life.

“Like any business, social enterprises need to build the capacity to operate at scale if they are to be able to compete for the opportunities that are now on the table.

“Ours is an ambitious approach and it only works because all three of the public, private and third sectors have come together. No-one would have achieved this alone.”

Simon Boyle added: “This is a project we’re all incredibly passionate about, it gives us all a chance to build a fantastic business that supports the underprivileged by giving them a career in one of the most exciting industries around.

“The standards we set at the fire station will be exceptional, we’re not just nurturing cooks here, we’re creating brilliant chefs.”

What a fantastic idea! Some of us will definitely be making a trip down there when it opens!

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Last night, Panorma on BBC1 ran an episode on the difficulties of finding work. It featured a fab little social enterprise to help unemployed people in Rhyl, North Wales.

Have you heard of any other social enterprises that have a similar aim? I personally know of the Hoxton Apprentice, The Canteen and Waterhouse Conference Centre.

People who stand up and don’t grovel. Whether they are swanky or not. Whether they change the world or just their streets. People who take a step forward rather than back when faced with a challenge.

Who inspires you? What do you see in people that makes you want to learn a new skill, strive to achieve, reach your goals?

At Common Purpose we want to make our contribution to helping some of today’s young people to at least get the leadership development that they would have had if they were in employment, so together with our alumni and supporters we have launched our Young Million campaign. We are running 3-day courses, each for 50 young unemployed people, to help them to be better leaders and understand what it takes to produce change.

Our alumni have been fantastic in donating their time (as speakers) and their financial support (the young people attend for free – their places are paid for by these donations). These are not passive courses in lecture theatres – the young people will hear from local leaders and be challenged to work on problems being faced by them in our current, fast-changing and challenging environment. This is real experiential learning.

Our first courses in Newcastle, London and Manchester are ready to receive applications from anyone currently unemployed, not in full time education and aged between 18-25. If you want more info visit our web site http://youngmillion.commonpurpose.org.uk/

This post is written by Caroline Duckworth, Managing Director, Common Purpose UK

1. Ronald Arculli
2. Narayana Murthy
3. Jude Kelly
4. Marjorie Scardino
5. Cyril Ramaphosa
6. Matt Baggott
7. Helena Kennedy
8. Devi Shetty
9. Isher Ahluwalia
10. Bernd Kundrun

Who would make your top 10 inspirational leaders? What is it about them that makes them stand out? Share your top leaders…

As we closed the hour long session which i enjoyed tremendously, (and incidentally spending time with this group of 16 – 21 year olds reinstates your faith in the youth of today) I left them with a sobering thought. In this age of social media your personal brand will not only be defined by how you conduct yourself in person but even more so by the digital footprint you leave behind. In the Google age the first thing you do before meeting someone is to generally go Google them and within Nano seconds a digital dossier of images, comments, thoughts, feelings, videos and anything else you can imagine is there to be digested and judged. I relayed a story of my niece who is now a very successful recruitment consultant but was once a ‘mad up for it’ clubber and if you every Googled her name a tricky photo of her straddling a chair wearing not much would be the 4th thing you saw… bit awkward!

I asked the group what did they say about themselves this weekend on their portfolio of social profiles! Did anyone upload any funny photos or crazzzzy videos?….. Their faces dropped a little and there were a few knowing looks!

Your digital footprint is like luggage… it stays with you for a very long time!

This is an excerpt from Andy Pickles’ blog post about contributing to a Common Purpose event for 16-21 year olds. Andy is a graduate of the Common Purpose 20:20 course and is currently the Chief Executive at U-Explore. This excerpt has been reproduced with his permission.

When you meet someone in a business or work environment and they are wearing something completely out of the “norm”, does this affect how people treat them? I believe that each person needs to be true to themselves in not only their behaviour, but the way that they present themselves. Saying this, by dressing in an alternate style to your average business man or woman, does this create unnecessary barriers for yourself?

I spoke to a gentleman a while ago who told a fascinating story about his experience. He used to dress in traditional Zambian attire, with the attitude that he could dress however he wanted. Years later he spoke to a friend who simply asked him why he was creating an unnecessary barrier for himself. Since then, he changed the way he dressed to blend in much more with western dress.

There are some interesting views on the topic in last month’s Prospect magazine. They have illustrated the story with people such as Michelle Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner and Indira Ghandhi.

What are your thoughts? Does the way someone dresses alter how you perceive them enough for this to be an issue?

This post is written by Isabella Betkowski, Media and Communications Officer at Common Purpose.

At the outset, I completely buy into the “serve to lead model” concept (incidentally the Sandhurst Military Academy motto) which for me encapsulates “leadership”; therefore it is the essence of ‘serving others’ that is at very core of my thinking. So who are the others that we should be serving?
1. Customers
2. Employees
3. Shareholders
4. The Community

The most elementary lesson that entrepreneurs learn at a very early stage of the development of their business is that the “customer” is king. When they set out on their journey, they have no “brand” to attract customers to work with them. They therefore know that they have to be considerably better than any of their competitors to win business. They are completely at their mercy and learn to serve their customers. This appreciation of the customer’s strength in determining whether the business will be successful or not, dictates its’ very strategy and implementation. Any worthwhile leader in a corporate business will view his/her customers as a key “stakeholder” but in some way their importance is dependent upon their market share, their intellectual property or even their technology. In many cases they struggle conceptually to serve their customers, but instead they perform a service for their customers largely on their terms!

The first employees in any entrepreneurial business are treated like family members. Typically the business is financially unstable, and therefore the entrepreneur relies very heavily upon achieving a high level of commitment from his/her employees such that they can create a value proposition sufficient to win business against brand named competitors. Likewise any worthwhile leader in a corporate business will again view his/her employees as a key “stakeholder”, however, an employee’s importance is in some way dependent upon the type of business; professional service company, capital intensive company, market position or brand strength etc. But due to hierarchical structures within organisations, and therefore the relative importance of employees at lower levels, corporate businesses struggle with the serve to lead model as their mentality generally revolves around the notion that the employees are there for the benefit of their manager/executive. It is therefore no surprise that family businesses, which are typically the product of an entrepreneur, are known to provide a more holistic environment and focus on serving their employees.

The first shareholders within an entrepreneurial business are the entrepreneurs. They typically manage their business in a financially conservative manner, fully respecting the stresses and implications of failure. This results in the demonstration of significantly different behaviors between the two camps.
Some examples, focusing upon the entrepreneur, would be that they tend to:
1. Put in place conservative rather than aggressive accounting policies therefore reducing profits rather than disclosing potentially high false profitability
2. Typically maintain a higher level of retained earnings within the business rather than distribute dividends
3. Be less likely to burden the business with debt, when considering their expansion plans, unless they are very confident in the ultimate success of the business or have an exit strategy for the asset
4. Be totally aligned with the interests of the shareholders in any financial reconstruction or requirement for liquidation
The above characteristics ensure that the entrepreneur is able to serve each of his shareholders in a more appropriate and reasonable manner.

Entrepreneurs see their businesses from their commencement as being part of the community, through their serving typically local customers, employing local people and living within a local community. It is only eventually that they are able to take their business outside their originating locality, but this same sense of community continues to pervade their businesses. Given this, why would an entrepreneur therefore develop a product or service which does not meet the needs of his community? Furthermore I have the perception, that more entrepreneurs than corporate leaders become philanthropists, thereby further helping their community later on down the line.

In addition, in achieving or trying to achieve the above, there are marked behavioural differences between entrepreneurs and corporate leaders:
1. Entrepreneurs take total ownership of the task at hand/business (not through shareholding) but through a desire to have a successful outcome for all stakeholders
2. An entrepreneur’s personal commitment can be all encompassing in their lives
3. Entrepreneurs are deeply passionate about their customers
4. Entrepreneurs are deeply passionate about their employees
5. Entrepreneurs wish to build something that can be passed onto their next generation and thus do not view the experience as a transient one
6. Entrepreneurs are happy to sacrifice personal income to ensure that the business succeeds
So what makes an entrepreneur wish to take this journey instead of possibly becoming a corporate leader? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book ‘The Outliers’, discusses the notion of one searching for and achieving ‘meaningful work’; work that is complex, autonomous and has a direct relationship between effort and reward. In short, I believe it is his/her quest for this meaningful work that leads him/her down this route.

Written by Tony Bury, serial entrepreneur and Founder of The Mowgli Foundation a not-for-profit organisation focused upon the mentoring of business and social entrepreneurs to create economic regeneration.

I learnt leadership, young and early. Not everyone is as lucky as I was but even if it’s not great, they are learning it.

So how are we going to ensure that the young people who are out of work in vast numbers in the UK get some of this important learning? Young people who are trying their level best to get work but failing who will be the leaders of the future but will miss out on some crucial years of learning.

Common Purpose can’t get people into jobs. But we can run our courses; courses which many employers pay fees for their young talent to attend; for the generation that might go without. So we’ve launched the Young Million campaign…

This post is written by Julia Middleton, Founder and Chief Executive, Common Purpose.

I just stumbled upon a fab little blog “Cool things in random places“. When you are stuck in a concrete jungle like London for most of the week, remembering that there are some fantastic sights and creations out there. I think one of my favourite places on the blog has to be the world’s largest cave passage in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle.

Sometimes I wonder, how can something like that or like this can be created…

What is your favourite place that you’ve been, or want to go to? What is it about it that you love?