Triple celebration for regeneration charity

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Communities

Housing association the Aspire Group has created a regeneration charity which puts its profits back into the community.

Here Will Nixon, chief executive of Aspire's social enterprise arm, Enterprising Futures, outlines why it was a natural move for the group.

Aspire Housing was always an organisation with a social ethos but three years ago we went a stage further by acquiring social enterprise training provider PM Training.

Since then several others have been brought into the Aspire Group’s social enterprise arm, Enterprising Futures, which now offers everything from training opportunities to 1,200 young people a year to furniture recycling services for those in social housing.

With this firmly established, we felt it was a natural move for the Group to establish the Realise Foundation charity in 2009.

Although founding a charity may seem an unusual step for a housing association, its aim fits perfectly with the Group’s social ethos: to help communities and people across north Staffordshire achieve their full potential.

And Realise Foundation has been a major success in this short time.

A total of £1m of profit from Enterprising Futures has now been reinvested in the region by the charity. On top of that, Realise’s other fundraising efforts have hit the £100,000 mark.

However, the human impact of these financial successes is what’s really satisfying. Thanks to these funds we have just helped our 100^th young person into an apprenticeship across Staffordshire.

Eighteen–year-old Matthew Nutt was the landmark 100^th apprentice to receive funding. 

Since he started training he has gained NVQs in construction and health and safety. He’s now working for Cartridge World and focusing on manufacturing and customer service in his apprenticeship.

It is these successes - breaking down barriers to learning and work, providing training opportunities to young people and therefore improving the local economy – that really transform communities.

Of course, as a housing association, we will continue to focus on homes, properties and neighbourhoods. Indeed, the Aspire Group will this year build more social housing properties than we ever have before.

But delivering better houses is just one element of our work and we believe that providing better learning and training opportunities - through our social enterprises and charity - is every bit as important to our communities.

- Will Nixon