Our newest ventures, four months on
Time flies when you’re nurturing a fledgeling social venture. It’s been just shy of four months since our newest startups made their pitches at Crowdbacker 2021 and joined the Year Here portfolio. Since then, they’ve hit the ground running, generating partnerships, press and most importantly — impact. Here’s a check-in with the four businesses, Spedal; LIVING PROOF; AimHire and Dream Green, with updates and achievements from their first few months in business.
Spedal
Spedal is an urban courier service reimagining the gig economy as a force for good. They offer same-day deliveries and provide a stepping stone for young people experiencing homelessness into full-time work. Spedal covered a lot of literal and figurative ground in their first quarter in business, hiring two riders who have cycled a collective 168km across the streets of East London delivering parcels for local businesses. They’ve drummed up some media attention, too, with features on the Buzzbike and WeWhoDo blogs. The team have been engaging with communities and organisations all over London, including St Mungo’s, Homeless Link and Bikeworks, to discuss collaborative work and collective impact for youth homelessness. Finally, they’ve been working with leaders and organisations to help further get things off the ground, including BCG and BNY Mellon.
LIVING PROOF
LIVING PROOF trains and employs overlooked young people, harnessing their creativity and raw talent to solve urgent problems for youth-focused businesses. Earlier this year, they wrapped their first project with UN Women UK, reimagining public spaces to make women and girls safe after lockdown. As part of this project, they hired a team of 11 — five expert facilitators and six young people, delivered five workshops with 190 participants, co-created 150 and prioritised 24 ideas with women and girls to make public spaces safe. There were 2000 community research surveys completed, which fed into the Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Call for Evidence. Team LIVING PROOF presented their findings to Parliament at an International Women’s Day event with the APPG for UN Women and received pledges from over 40 people spanning Government, public sector, industry experts, the police and activist organisations.
Co-founder Winnie Ogwang was featured on The Stack: 25 Black Female Founders to invest in now and was awarded a spot on The Collective Foundation Impact Residency 2021, while Miriam became a Founding Collaborator of the Creative Entrepreneurs Impact Playbook project, funded by the British Council’s DICE Digital R&D Fund, in partnership with Enterprise Academy (UK) and FURTHER (SA).
AimHire
AimHire helps young people from less privileged backgrounds into successful careers in sales through training, employer partnerships and workplace support. The unemployment rate for 16–24-year-olds is up more than 10% from the previous year due to the pandemic, with thousands of young people struggling to find work. Aimhire is working to harness and nurture the natural talent of young people, with nine active employers currently working with them and the Kickstart scheme to look for candidates from Aberdeen all the way down to Southport. They’re now looking for 30 young people to join those companies — including one role with AimHire itself! Three training programmes are kicking off in June, one of those being with Year Here’s very own Appt Health. On the publicity front, Hundo Careers interviewed founder Nova Arkney, and AimHire was featured in Comms Dealer Magazine.
Dream Green
Dream Green empowers you to become a guerrilla gardener. From digital guides to physical starter kits, their resources help you transform grey, neglected corners of your neighbourhood into vibrant pockets of plant life that benefit both people and the planet. Dream Green received a £5k grant from The Do School to run a “Grey to Green” challenge in which people can win prizes for creating guerrilla gardens in their local area. The BBC is shooting Dream Green in a couple of weeks as part of a series they’re doing on rewilding, and there’s a 3-part IGTV series by EcoResolution in the works. There have been four corporate team workshops held and over 150 Sunflower Kits sold. Get your hands on Sunflower Starter Kits and Seed Bombs to start brightening up the city streets.
