The Organisation Workshop is a brand new (to the UK) method of enabling people living in deprived communities to generate sustainable jobs and incomes in new start up social enterprises.
Based on Brazilian sociologist Clodomir Santos De Morais’s concept of ‘capacitation’ (as opposed to the more traditional ‘capacity building’) the OW process enables large groups of people to ‘grow’ the organisational capacity, the entrepreneurial spirit and the business acumen they will need to start up and sustain social businesses.
Although the Marsh Farm OW will be the first ever to take place in the UK, the process has proven its feasibility, effectiveness and replicability on three continents over the last 37 years, and is particularly noted for its success in engaging socially excluded members of the community. Marsh Farm will seek host 3 Organisation Workshops in 2012, 2013 and 2014, providing unemployed residents of the estate with a once in a lifetime opportunity to create their own jobs by selling high quality goods and services to customers living or working in Marsh Farm, throughout Luton and beyond, whilst making a massive contribution to the social and economic well being of thecommunity at the same time.
The £839,000 New Deal for Communities funding allocated for the pilot Organisation Workshop in Marsh Farm after 9 years of work by MFO members and residents of Marsh Farm, was lost to the estate following severe mismanagement (at least) of public funds by managers at the Marsh Farm Community Development Trust (MFCDT) who are the delivery agency responsible for funding the project..
A complete absence of any effective financial monitoring systems allowed hundreds of thousands of pounds to be spent without authority to cover up massive overspending by a few multinational companies who were carrying out other works for MFCDT. This led to loss of the OW funds which were allocated by the board of MFCDT specifically for job creation by and for unemployed locals.
An internal inquiry held subsequently found that severe mismanagement of public funding by Trust managers was responsible. A high court judge also made severe criticisms of the way public fuunding was handled, none of which recovers the lost funding of course. This has been given to multi mil;lion pound companies who pay their executives more in bonuses than the cost of our entire project...where's the justice in that?
Just to be clear, we have not given up on reclaiming some of the funds which were used instead by these multinationals, and have asked for a meeting with their leading executives to discuss our situation....watch this space for more on this as things develop.
For full details of our work on the Community Organisers programme see the link.
