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Inspiring Social Enterprises – We’re in (Global) Good Company

Guest blog by Simon Dukes, CEO of Fair for You, finalist in Community Partnerships Award category.
Fair for You has been shortlisted for a Global Good Award, one of the foremost schemes recognising organisations driving social change. We’re very proud to be in contention.
We are even more proud of the work which got us nominated, the Iceland Food Club. Working with Iceland Foods, we provide affordable micro-loans which help UK families put food on plates, and we’re hoping that this pilot can continue to expand – building on its success so far. You can read more about the scheme here.
But that’s enough about us. One of the great things about being nominated for awards is that it provides an opportunity to be inspired by and learn from fellow nominees. Here are five nominees who particularly caught my eye…
1) NatWest Group
Nominated in Global Good Company of the Year
I know that some will scoff at the ESG and CSR propositions of big business, but to my mind it’s hugely positive that banks are seeing the need to “make a positive contribution to society”, in the words of NatWest’s entry synopsis, which stresses the importance of having a “reciprocal relationship with society, the environment and the communities where we operate… because when people, families and businesses succeed, we thrive together”.
I’m looking forward to seeing the upcoming publication of research by NatWest, in conjunction with our investors Fair4All Finance, into how ethnicity influences access to financial products in the UK. From initiatives like this to its partnership with Marcus Rashford, it’s clear that NatWest Group CEO Alison Rose’s desire to do the right thing is shared across the business. We at Fair for You know that too many low-income households aren’t being properly served by mainstream banks. The sooner that changes, the better.
2) DelAgua – Rwanda Tubeho Neza Stoves Project
Nominated in Community Partnerships (the same one as Fair for You)
Wherever you are in the world, having the equipment you need to prepare good meals is crucial not just to health and diet, but in turn to a whole range of other things like making sure children can concentrate at school and that adults can participate fully in society.
While we’ve been helping many low-income customers in the UK to get kitchen appliances, in Rwanda more than 2.3 million rural households are being provided with stoves by the Tubeho Neza project, led by UK-based enterprise DelAgua. It is innovative in its use of both technology and finance – the stoves use significantly less wood than traditional open fires meaning hugely reduced carbon emissions, and less deforestation. That in turn means that the project is financed through the sale of carbon credits, meaning they can be provided for free.
Impressively, 99% of stoves remain in daily use two years after being provided – thanks in part to a team of community health workers who support families to use them. It’s a great example of how giving a relatively modest bit of assistance to low-income families, and making sure to engage meaningfully with them, can create huge results when done at scale.
3) SpunkGo
Nominated in Canon Young Champion of the Year (under 16s)
“There are young women across rural settings, slums and refugee camps across the developing world who have potential but lack exposure due to their circumstances,” begins SpunkGo’s synopsis. The SpunkGo project runs LifeSkill webinars designed to empower and expand the horizons of these young women and girls and also provides digital services to SMEs in order to generate money for a range of charities.
Founded by an inspiring 15-year-old schoolgirl from Dubai, the project chimes with a founding value of Fair for You. Our brand colours – purple, green and white – were chosen for matching those of the suffragette movement more than a century ago. The majority of our customers are women. We share SpunkGo’s belief in empowering women to support their families and communities, and to be happy, health and fulfilled.
4) KPMG UK’s Education Programme
Nominated in Educational Excellence
“Too often where you are born, or what school you went to dictates your life chances,” notes KPMG’s entry synopsis. Everyone in the UK should realise that this is the case and should be offended by it. Working at Fair for You, both with the data I see and the customers’ stories I hear, have given me a heightened appreciation of how difficult it is for many low-income families to simply survive.
As with NatWest, it’s good to see big business stepping in to make a difference in some way. In 2021, KPMG supported more than 230,000 young people in disadvantaged communities to develop their skills and raise their aspirations. It’s also savvy from a business point of view – in terms of nurturing future talent from a more diverse pool than that usually accessed by professional service firms, in terms of employee engagement and satisfaction; and in terms of dispelling the impression of blue-chips companies being too distant from and not understanding the issues facing wider society.
5) Datastake
Nominated for Game Changing Innovation of the Year
It makes me smile that on its Twitter account, Datastake has written in the ‘location’ field: “Where Google Failed.” It speaks to the point that financial services providers, and many other businesses, are often bad at catering for individuals and organisations who cannot be easily understood through things like a digital footprint and a populated credit file or other well-structured data.
Datastake says it is “revolutionising access to information in weak-governance countries” – it creates what it calls a “granular data wallet” to enable organisations to better understand customers and markets which would otherwise be too risky to work with. As the CEO of an organisation which lends to customers who others find too risky, this is music to my ears. Businesses and institutions often talk about ‘hard to reach groups’, and lack of data is one of the reasons it can be challenging to reach or service such communities. Unfortunately, the phrase ‘hard to reach’ is letting off the hook those organisations who simply can’t be bothered to think creatively and find ways to access untapped pools of customers or service users.
Good luck to all of these enterprises in their endeavours – I look forward to meeting them and others at the awards ceremony in October.
Learn more about Fair for You or learn about all the finalists here. The Global Good Awards ceremony, when all winners will be announced, takes place at BMA House in London on 13 October.
The Global Good Awards 2022 are now closed for entries.
You can see the full listing of all our 2021 winners here.