Aspire

Story of Self

I was working for several years at a burger shop on Cowley Road. I was ambitious and hard working so I was a general manager at only age 22. But I felt limited in the hospitality sector - and I wanted to develop further in my work.

I thought maybe I could become a director of my own company. I left hospitality and became self-employed. I enjoyed 4 amazing years of being self employed- opening customer bases for online sales. Covid happened and I made a few mistakes in the business that were hard to come back from and the business failed.

A friend of mine worked at Aspire and suggested I apply to this job which was supporting people to set up their own business through the “Enterprise Development Programme”. I thought well, I could do that as I could relate to the struggles many of the clients at Aspire have faced. 

I got the job and on the first day my boss Sophie was delivering a course called “Getting Into Business”. It was a trial by fire because she literally asked me to deliver the presentation with her on my first day. I realized I had quite a lot to say. Since then I’ve stayed and have developed my role within Aspire. 

We do community wealth building in two main ways: 

Firstly we help people set up their own community, social or independent business. Through this people have a stronger base in life. If they can look after themselves and their own finances, they are able to help others, and also they do not have to rely on social support services which can in turn be used for others who need them. So we’re building wealth for individuals, communities and the wider system. We do open-access courses, but we also work with specific demographics: people who’ve been homeless, people who’ve experienced substance abuse, prison leavers, and increasingly refugees. We adapt our courses to suit the audience. 

What I teach on those courses is how to start with nothing and still create a business. If you want to set up a café you’d need approximately £500,000 in start-up capital, which would be a huge barrier to achieving your goal. With this in mind, we teach a concept of “start but start small” which takes the business idea down to its simplest model and builds from there. In the case of a café, instead of directly going in and trying to raise the start-up capital, how about minimising your start-up costs by purchasing a urn, a trailer and a bicycle and being a very basic hot drinks vendor at local sport events for young people? Then using the profits from this venture to slowly expand the business to get bigger and better equipment to offer a large range of products depending on customer demand.

Secondly, we help people into employment through our inclusive employment service. One man I’ve been supporting these last few months for example was a prison leaver. He had been struggling to get work for 18 months. I worked with him for 3 months and got him a permanent contract at a shop in the Westgate on above-minimum wage. 

We support people after they get the job too. For the first week of their new job we call them every day after their shift. After that it’s once a week. The power is that we’re one organisation and can offer lots of different services under one roof. People don’t have to get referred somewhere else. We try to provide wrap around support. 

Story of Us

Aspire in general has been involved with many other community enterprises in Oxford too- Paul Roberts, our former CEO, was involved in setting up Make Space, Flo’s, and he was a director of OSEP. 

We’ve been working with OSEP and various others including Make Space, CoOp Futures, SOFEA to deliver a project funded by the Shared Prosperity Fund in the South and Vale district. It's all about setting up your social impact business. It's carrying on similar work we have done with Oxford City. We also work with OxLEP and the OEIP. 

In terms of employment we’ve worked a lot recently with Midcounties Coop and Land Sec (company behind the Westgate) who provide jobs and work experience for our clients. We’ve placed 11 people in 5 months. 

Aspire has worked with lots of other community organisations - last year I was involved in supporting the CIC which were part of a participatory grantmaking programme run by the Oxford Hub. Lots of community members wanted to set up a small business so I helped them do that. 

Now is the time to be supporting innovation and enabling small businesses to be set up. The small businesses today are the big businesses of tomorrow. If we don’t all want to be working for Elon Musk in the future, we need to grow the business sector and enable people to have routes into it- especially those on low incomes or Universal Credit. 

Story of Now: calls to action

People on universal credit who want to start their own business are disadvantaged: as their self-employed business starts making them an income, their universal credit allowance goes down. So they can never save funds to invest in the enterprise - they have to use it to live. So a lot of businesses fail. 

There used to be a 12-month enterprise development period where, if you could prove you were setting up your own business, your Universal Credit was not reduced. That way you can reinvest any profits your business starts making into so that it can become more sustainable. It would be great if a change in national policy like that could be tried in a region like Oxfordshire. Job centres also need to recognise setting up a business or being self-employed as a viable route into work

The high cost of living and very high cost of rent is still Oxford’s biggest challenge. If we could be better at ensuring everyone was at least getting a minimum Oxford Living Wage that would make things a bit easier. In general I am pleased with the new Chancellor's budget, but the changes to National Insurance are going to be difficult for companies and maybe there will be a drop off in people paying the Oxford Living Wage. We need collective commitment to ensure that changes in the budget do not lead to a drop off in people paying the Oxford Living Wage. 

Reduce barriers to people starting their own business

Oxfordshire needs to work with Job Centres, central government and others to recognise and support people on benefits who are setting up a business or self-employed as a viable route into work. 

Ensuring the Oxford Living wage is widespread

We need renewed and collective commitment from employers in Oxfordshire in the light of budget and tax changes to continue to pay the Oxfordshire Living Wage, and to encourage more employers to do so. 

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