Empowering 2 Change is a cooperative (not for profit) which aims to support people seeking recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Here’s what Empowering 2 Change had to say about the project…
As part of Community Action Portsmouth (CAP), we supported the set up of a “Recovery Cafe” in Portsmouth to provide a place where people in recovery and those seeking help can come for support, advice, support groups such as ACT, Life Coaching, and other projects which we hope will provide opportunities for people to access training and work experience which will help them enter the job market and move away from benefit dependency.
The team at CAP have been incredibly supportive in helping us make a vision into reality. They are knowledgeable, supportive and accessible. They have helped us by giving advice on many of the practical issues which arise when you are trying to set up a new enterprise. e.g. structure, governance, admin and financial record keeping, etc.
They have also provided a number of training courses and workshops which are relevant to a range of different types of enterprises. The monthly Action News (now called ‘Things you really need to know’) is also extremely useful in helping to raise awareness of training, funding opportunities and other community issues. We have received invaluable support from all the CAP team and I particularly value the 1:1 support we received.
The support from CAP has given us the confidence to do the groundwork on some of the projects we want to set up which will (we hope) provide training and work experience for our clients and ultimately provide a revenue stream which will empower us and our clients by helping to fund services and activities. We have also been given the opportunity through CAP to be part of a consortium which is bidding for £500,000 for recovery activities.
I am particularly impressed by the fact that the CAP team have hands on experience of setting up enterprises and they have a real understanding of what is needed to get an enterprise off the ground.
