Nominations are still open for the 2020 Social Entrepreneur Index, which returns for a second year. Once again we will be celebrating the success of the UK's most inspiring social entrepreneurs and sharing their stories with you.
Social entrepreneurs make a vitally important difference in our society. Our SEI campaign recognises and celebrates the passionate, driven and innovative people behind some of the best socially-aimed businesses in the UK.
The SEI is a celebration of entrepreneurs running businesses with social purposes, with the aim of providing recognition whilst also acting as a benchmark for good practice to inspire the next generation.
After last years’ inaugural Index, we put together a list of companies who we feel are Ones to Watch. These entries were selected by our judges as the best of the rest and over the past year we’ve kept an eye on these entrants, as they are set to achieve great things in
the future.
One of our Ones to Watch was Wild & Kind CIC, a Glasgow based Community Interest Company that runs a garment printing studio supplying 100% organic or recycled, ethically sourced garments and using a chemical free printing process with plastic free, vegan inks. 100% of Wild & Kind’s profits go towards tackling loneliness and isolation while empowering women and those in marginalised gender groups to realise their full creative potential.
Last year, they were running free "safe space" workshops, offering free start up support for creatives and also offer discounts on their printing services to women and people from marginalised gender groups, people who experience social and economic barriers, start-ups, art school graduates, charities and social enterprises. They are a rapidly growing enterprise that has future plans to create more community safe spaces within areas of deprivation across Glasgow while continuing to raise revenue as ethically as possible.
We caught up with Trudi Donahue, Director of Wild & Kind CIC to see what they’ve been up to and what has changed in this past year:
“We’ve come a long way since we were last in contact! One of our long term goals was to open a female focused creative space in Glasgow for women and people from marginalised gender groups. This would allow us to have a safe space where we could not only run our own workshops, but facilitate others too. We actually launched our 2000sq ft space in February, so we are pretty excited to see how things progress throughout the next year!”
“We haven’t really had any change of direction. We listen to what our beneficiaries want and from the start that’s pretty much stayed the same. We run an ethical garment printing services, and up until now we’ve been using a digital printing process only. We have since invested in a Risograph printer, and I am excited to say that we will soon be investing in eco-friendly screen printing equipment which will allow us to continue to develop our services and provide even more options for our customers.
We have not strayed from our aims of tackling loneliness and isolation; however, we also recognise the importance of our environmental impact and so we now actively look to tackle climate change through ethical printing.
To learn more about Wild & Kind CIC, head over to their Facebook page.
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