Buy A Coffee To Help The Homeless

Profits from take-away coffee stalls could help those who need it most – and the drinks are served by someone who was struggling to get a job.

For those commuters travelling on Virgin Trains, the coffee now comes courtesy of a special social enterprise project called Change Please, reports Sky News. Any money raised is helping homeless people to get off the streets and into work through mobile coffee vans. Launched in Peckham in 2015, it operates coffee carts part-staffed by homeless people training to be baristas, who are paid the London Living Wage and supported with finding housing, bank accounts and therapy.

The project’s founder, Cemal Ezel, said: “It works by finding people who are ready for employment. We train them to be a barista, we provide them with housing within 10 days, a bank account, therapy, support and then within six months after joining us, we support our staff into new jobs.”

In the last three years, Change Please has helped get more than 84 people back into work at 32 sites across London and Manchester. It’s help that’s badly needed. According to homeless charity Crisis, since 2010 there’s been a 169% increase in the number of homeless people in England.

Charlie Wigglesworth, deputy chief executive of Social Enterprise UK, said the project was “hugely significant”. He said: “For a big organisation like Virgin Trains to see the opportunity in buying their coffee from a social enterprise makes a huge difference in terms of the impact that social enterprise can then have by supporting homeless people.”

“Social enterprises are already a much bigger sector than people realise – there’s about 100,000 social enterprises that contribute £60bn to the UK economy and they’re only going to grow based on business. They’re not looking for philanthropy or for handouts, they need opportunity.”

“Social enterprise offers a supportive environment but within a market, within a mainstream business, so there’s an opportunity there to develop and grow within a job and that’s what’s going to do the most to help to end homelessness in the UK.”

For more information, go to https://www.changeplease.org