Dirty Products – social enterprise for young people

Thanks to the award of a grant from the European Social Fund, we are pleased to announce the start of our new social enterprise opportunity for young people.

It is clear from problems such as rising youth homelessness and unemployment that a whole generation of disadvantaged young people are at risk of failing to reach their potential, at huge cost to the UK economy and our society. In Rossendale, as elsewhere, this problem is particularly pertinent. Young people accommodated by M3 are facing ever shrinking opportunities to engage in training and work as a number of local training providers have shut recently, and the labour market is particularly hostile to young people at present.

Whilst the project works with young people around their accommodation and independent living skills,  M3 believes that social enterprise is a missing component of that solution. Young people can benefit from enterprises that can build their skills and confidence; that can create and keep wealth within deprived communities; and that can build trust, responsibility, provide role models, reward hard work and give young people a voice and a stake in what they do.

This programme addresses all of those issues by bringing these aspects of young people‟s interests together, whilst also helping them to create their own routes to employment and contribute to local economic growth.

‘Dirty Products’ is a flexible and engaging 6 x half-day programme that puts the emphasis on learning skills that will enable young people to prosper in their personal lives. The course can also be used with a diverse number of groups with the aim of nurturing a business-related career path. It is designed flexibly around six modules that will be ideal for learning the basics of business-start-up, financial management and marketing. (Along the way the workshops will increase confidence, skills and experience of the world of commerce/business/enterprise.)

The workshops allow Young People to work in teams to design, create, package and market products from scratch based on an ‘Adrenaline Sports’ theme– soap, shower gel, bike cleaner, clothing etc ‘ Support for the programme and distribution of products made has been arranged with Ride-On, an established mountain bike shop based in the Rossendale Valley. The collaboration and support from the shop will greatly contribute to the success of this new project.