News
October 2009
LRS wins £30k grant from Barclays
LRS is celebrating after winning a £30,000 grant from Barclays to improve its services to social enterprises in the most disadvantaged parts of the capital.
The grant will go towards speeding up the handling of loan applications and meeting customer demand, which has increased dramatically over the last 18 months.
LRS is one of five CDFIs nationwide to receive the £30,000 grant.
The funding was made available by Barclays in partnership with the Community Development Finance Association (cdfa) to help community lenders meet the demands of the recession.
LRS - Barclays grant fund press release
May 2009
LRS CE elected to SEC Council 
Naomi Kingsley, Chief Executive of London Rebuilding Society, has been elected to the Council of the Social Enterprise Coalition.
The Council includes representatives of Social Enterprise umbrella and network organisations as well as social enterprises themselves, and will shape the Council's future policy and campaigning framework.
Further details can be found at http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/
January 2009
LRS in the news
Naomi Kingsley, Chief Executive of LRS, is interviewed in the December 08 / January 09 edition of Social Enterprise magazine.
She explains her ideas for bank and government investment into the Community Finance sector to create both social and financial return in the current difficult times.
This would break the impasse in bank lending and stimulate the creation and safeguarding of jobs.
Download pdf of the full article here - Social Enterprise Magazine article
http://www.socialenterprisemag.co.uk/
November 2008
A lion not a dragon
London Rebuilding Society's Chief Executive Naomi Kingsley was one of the judges at Lion's Lair - an event for ambitious social entrepreneurs in Camden and Islington on November 20th during National Enterprise Week 2008. In partnership with The Hub, the British Library, Innovation Central and Striding Out, Camden and Islington Council's social enterprise 
programme put on the competition to win a £1000 cash award to start or develop an enterprise with a social aim.
Five enterprises were short listed by the panel of Lions and received an annual membership subscription to The Hub (worth £400) from the Camden Social Enterprise Project funded by the LDA, and the opportunity to present in front of an audience at the event.
Carole Louvet of HNG Stress won the prize of £1000, Alice Belibi of 121 Women and Computers won £600 of business mentoring support provided by Striding Out, a social enterprise specialising in business coaching and youth enterprise.
HNG Stress Project is a community-based charity established since 1993; it provides a holistic therapy service that treats the whole person not just the illness. The trading arm 'The Serenity Clinic 'is a non-for profit community enterprise, set up to help support the Stress Project.
121 Women and Computers is a CIC community interest company, which engages with disadvantaged women to teach I.T skills, Photoshop and basic editing programmes to increase the benefit to both the students and the community in general, helping them to secure either full or part-time employment in a field that has an ever-increasing need.
The other short listed enterprises were:
Kids for Life - Adrienne Montes
Healthy Planet - Shaylesh Patel
Petits Miracles Interiors - Elisicia and Theo Moore
October 2008
Proper Oils wins national O2 Business Awards
Proper Oils' success at the O2 X Awards, held at The O2, London, is attributed to its innovative and sustainable approach to business.
Founded in April 2007, the company is the only collector working with local authorities to facilitate free collections of used cooking oil from over 800 caterers in West London.
(Stephen Hurton, second from right shown receiving the award from Trevor Bayliss, second from left.)
The refined bio diesel is then sold to local organisations with a proportion of profits being returned to support local environmental initiatives.
Simon Devonshire, Head of O2 SME Marketing, comments: "We're delighted to be able to recognise Proper Oils as a winner in the 2008 O2 X Awards. The calibre of the entries we received this year was exceptional and Proper Oils really marked themselves out as an innovative small business that is using technology to push back the boundaries and do something genuinely different amongst the UK's thriving small business community."
Now in their 5th year, The O2 X Awards provide a valuable platform for small businesses to highlight their achievements. Selection criteria focused on cutting edge innovation, creative vision and a drive to succeed in the sectors of Food & Drink, Fashion, Technology & Innovation and Music.
Stephen Hurton, MD and founder, Proper Oils (second from right in photo), comments: 'We are delighted to have won the Technology & Innovation O2 X Award 2008. Through hard work and dedication we have used technology to develop a successful and socially responsible company and it's great that our achievements have been recognised in this way.'
June 2008
Fuse Jobs appears on Working Lunch
OK, he might have "misconstrued information" and spent only four months at Thames Valley University rather than the two years that he claimed on his CV, but The Apprentice candidate Lee McQueen still heard those magic words, "You're hired" and landed the £100K plum job with Sir Alan Sugar.
Viewers' reaction to his CV creativity was mixed, from 'cheats never prosper' to 'what was on his CV wasn't relevant to the tasks set', although some pointed out that, according to the rules of the competition itself, he should have been fired for lying. Indeed, panellists on Radio 4's Any Questions on 13 June - which included Julia Neuberger, Andrew Lansley and Ed Balls - were equally incensed that Sir Alan ignored the lie: what message did that send out about employers' attitudes?
The dust has settled but the question remains: should you lie on your CV, even just a little bit? To shed some light on that and some new job issues, Fuse Jobs co-founder Amanda Lacey was invited to appear on BBC2's Working Lunch. Fuse Jobs is an online agency that specialises in entry-level and lower-level recruitment and is one of LRS' latest borrowers.
Amanda's answer to 'that' question was: although everyone should try to show themselves in the best possible light and many people get creative with how they present what they have achieved, you should never actually lie on your CV. You will always get found out and employers won't like it. Having said that, she also thought it would help candidates if employers used some form of work experience in job interviews in which applicants could demonstrate the kind of skills that are difficult to get across on a CV.
Given the nature of many of Fuse's clients, the programme-makers also asked Amanda about how you can survive the first few weeks of what is frequently a daunting prospect: your first ever job. Here she made the crucial point that, if you got the job it was because the employer wanted you and by definition they want you to succeed. Perhaps that's why Sir Alan forgave Lee his little porkie?
To find out more about Fuse Jobs, visit the Clients section of our website, or click on http://www.fusejobs.co.uk/
April 2008
Green Works gets the Queen's Award for Enterprise
London Rebuilding Society borrower Green Works has received the Queen's Award for Enterprise, the most prestigious accolade for business related achievement in the UK, for its contribution to sustainable development.
Green Works provides a national service managing and recycling redundant office furniture on an industrial scale. Many high profile major firms such as Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, EDF Energy and BT are accredited members and have all donated their old furniture to the company instead of sending it to landfill. Green Works then either remakes the furniture into new items which are sold on their website, or they sell on recycled office furniture to other not-for-profit organisations, charities and social enterprises at specially discounted rates.
At a time when businesses are increasingly looking at their wider impact it is clear this innovative approach provides companies with the opportunity to improve their environmental performance and cut costs whilst delivering real social benefits at the same time.
Visit http://www.green-works.co.uk/ for further information and read their entry in the Clients section of this website.
February 2008
LRS Chair of the Board calls for responsible lending
'The Death of Margaret Thatcher'
LRS staff were pleasantly surprised to see that The Courtyard Theatre's 'The Death of Margaret Thatcher' featured on BBC London TV news on Tuesday 5th February.
Written by Tom Green and directed by the theatre's founder June Abbott, the play runs until 2nd March and its content is self-explanatory.
However, it has received mixed reviews in the press - depending upon the paper's political leanings.
The Times, for example, hated it, but it was a highly recommended finalist of The Kings Cross Award for New Writing 2007.
So if you want to see what all the fuss was about, we suggest you book now and make up your own mind.
Visit http://www.thecourtyard.org.uk/ and read their entry in the Clients section of this website.
Gorman takes Tonic T-shirt for a ride
An eagle-eyed LRS staff member noticed that stand-up comedian Dave Gorman was wearing a Tonic T-shirt (the chimp and bananas one) while doing a suitably laid-back piece to camera on Venice Beach, Los Angeles for his 'America Unchained' documentary (E4, 5th February 2008).
Charlie Ward, co-founder of Tonic T-shirts, was equally laid back when we phoned her with the good news. 'Oh yeah, he visited our Spitalfields stall and bought several 'tees' a long time ago,' she said.
So, good to know that (a) the T-shirts are ethically sourced and fairly traded, (b) they travel widely, (c) the colours don't fade even after several years of washing.
The documentary concerns a road trip that Gorman made in an attempt to cross the US, coast to coast, without giving any money to chain businesses (hence the title).
So that's probably where the T-shirt came in.
The documentary has been released on DVD, and the book version is due out in April. Visit http://www.davegorman.com/.
For more info on Tonic T-shirts,
visit http://www.tonictshirts.com/
and read their entry in the Clients section of our website.
15 January 2008
Belu founder picks up another SE award
Beating off strong competition from the likes of the Eden Project and MIND, an obesity treatment programme, Reed Paget (front and centre), founder of Life Water which produces Belu Spring Water, has been named The Independent's Social Entrepreneur of the Year. The award is as much for Life Water's innovative use of recyclable, renewable corn-based polymer plastic bottles as for its funding of clean water projects in developing countries and recycling and pollution reduction projects in the UK.
The 'gong' was presented by another sector stalwart, Big Issue founder John Bird, and the competition itself is run in partnership with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Boston Consulting Group.
Life Water has been an LRS borrower since 2005, when it received a loan of £50,000 to help launch and market its 'plastic' bottle version. Despite the fact that it is now eminently 'bankable' according to more conventional lenders, when it needed a second loan of £50,000 it was to LRS that Life Water returned because they like what we do and the way that we do it. For the full awards story, visit http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article3339146.ece. You can also read Belu's case study.