Shadow Justice Secretary visits Miss Macaroon CIC
Shabana Mahmood, Shadow Justice Secretary and Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Ladywood MP visited Miss Macaroon CIC, a social enterprise based in the city centre.
The Labour frontbencher and Miss Macaroon CEO Rosie Ginday discussed skills development to build work opportunities in Birmingham, local & national government procurement opportunities & the power of collaboration in the social economy sector.
Shabana Mahmood was given a tour by Miss Macaroon CIC current trainees and shown how to fill & match macaroons in the production kitchen.
The visit organised by School for Social Entrepreneurs provided a welcome opportunity to showcase the role of social businesses. SSE as part of the Future Economy Alliance is calling on future government leaders to make bold reforms to support diverse business models such as social enterprises, community businesses & co-operatives and ensure our country’s economy works for everybody.
Shabana Mahmood was hugely interested in the potential Miss Macaroon CIC provides young people who are furthest from the work market to develop not only work but personal skills in their graduate programmes. Shabana and Rosie’s conversation following the tour centred on the potential for local and national government to support smaller social enterprises enter the procurement market and Shabana promised Rosie a follow up conversation.
“It’s brilliant to see locally rooted organisations such as Miss Macaroon CIC working in collaboration with local support services to provide holistic support and employment skills development to over 200 Birmingham based young people. It is testament to their dedication and passion that they continue to keep in touch with their journeys beyond the social impact training courses. Rosie’s business model means her mightily delicious macaroons make it into shops & kitchens around the UK but her impact stays local”.
“At the Labour Party, we’re proud to support and grow more organisations like Miss Macaroon. In the manifesto, we’ve committed to growing diverse business models who we know bring economic growth and social impact. We want to work with organisations like the School for Social Entrepreneurs to address barriers that the sector faces around access to finance and how to help social organisations to start up and scale up” - Shabana Mahmood
“At Miss Macaroon CIC we believe in keeping our support local but work with national corporates to scale our opportunities. Getting early depth of knowledge and support initially in our journey, through the Scale Up programme at the School for Social Entrepreneurs, catalysed our development as an organisation. Social enterprises need programmes like this to scale further to support more social purpose organisations. We would love to see more government support directed towards skills support, and for local and national bodies to work with smaller organisations to build upon the Social Value act work so far to break barriers of entry into the procurement market across sectors.” - Rosie Ginday, CEO, Miss Macaroon)
“It’s particularly encouraging to hear Shabana and the Labour Party’s commitment to supporting grow diverse business models. We know social enterprises, cooperatives, community businesses like Miss Macaroon CIC play a key role in driving growth especially in deprived places. As a sector, we have ready-made solutions to start and scale these organisations” - Robin Chu, Director of Strategic Projects and External Affairs, the School for Social Entrepreneurs
The School for Social Entrepreneurs
A registered charity, founded over 25 years ago to support social entrepreneurs. Since 1997, SSE have helped thousands of people develop the skills, strengths, and networks they need to tackle society’s biggest problems. In turn, they help millions of people in need.
SSE brings extensive experience supporting place-based social enterprises and is deeply embedded in communities across the country, with local networks, reach, expertise, and infrastructure.
Since 2017, we have delivered over £7m of Match Trading grants to almost 1000 social enterprises across the UK, delivering positive outcomes in job creation, trading income uplift and social impact.
A community interest company, founded in 2011 in Birmingham where they are still based and now the region’s most renowned social enterprise.
Miss Macaroon invests 100% of its profits from selling premium macaroons to its social impact projects.
Miss Macaroon’s programmes support unemployed young people gain skills that will help changes their lives by building confidence and becoming work ready.
The CIC’s programmes involve training small groups of individuals aged 18 to 35 and tailoring each ten-week course to address their personal barriers to employment. To inspire and motivate the trainees, they hear from peer mentors who are previous graduates with jobs. One to one mentoring provides support throughout the course, during follow on work experience and into employment for up to six months. The trainees leave the course with a five-year plan, up to date CV, extensive interview practice, industry contacts and help to apply for jobs.
Shabana Mahmood (centre) with Rosie Ginday, CEO of Miss Macaroon, and Robin Chu, Director of Strategic Projects and External Affairs at SSE