Breakfast at Dawn...

What have you achieved this week? If you don’t reflect on this positively you can often think you’ve achieved nothing and rob yourself of affirmation of success. 

So for this week’s blog I’ll start by giving a little bit of self-reflection.

The last week has been fairly busy. On Friday I was at my induction as board member of the Highlands Third Sector Interface. I look forward to exploring how we can deliver on the development of volunteering and social enterprise, and also supporting a strong third sector, and building the relationship with community planning. I am looking forward to next week – and attending the first board meeting as we explore how best to deliver this in the Highlands of Scotland.

The new week began well. On Monday, I was at a lunch with John Swinney – Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth. It was refreshing to hear him talk about the recovery of the Scottish economy, the role of enterprise and entrepreneurs in this recovery and in particular how some of the work we do contributes. In fact he talked about much of what I wrote last week (I wonder if he has been reading my blog? :) ). 

He spoke of how social enterprise not only changes lives of people and creates opportunity for them, but does so in a way that enables people to move from being a cost to society to being a contributor. And I couldn’t agree more. Through engaging with social enterprises, people are able to go from being a cost to society to being in employment and enjoying employment. And instead of claiming benefits they are in a place that they pay tax. Additionally, the wonderful benefit for them, as human beings, is enjoying an increased sense of worth and value. Despite getting the opportunity to meet with like-minded people, I find it important to maintain my own focus as well – and that is to continue to create opportunities.

With social enterprise being the growing movement that it is, and with Social Enterprise Scotland being the umbrella that promotes it in our country, I enjoyed meeting with their board in Perth on Tuesday. We were looking at how to ensure social enterprise in Scotland is shaped for the future, and in the most relevant way. We explored the provision of support to maximise social impact. We wish to ensure that we are not only fit for purpose now, but fit for purpose looking into the future which has particular resonance at this key time for the sector.

Despite it being a fairly hectic time, I always enjoy weeks like this. One of the perks of living in the highlands at this time of year - when day is short and night is long – is that if you’ve a meeting in the central belt you can be having your breakfast on the train while whizzing past the cairngorms. This is both breath taking and a beautiful tonic during the winter months.

So, this week I found myself sitting on a board for interface, another for social enterprise and meeting with policy makers, plus all of this while running New Start Highland. Indeed, it is important to ensure that the work we, as an organisation, do with these strategic boards, in engaging with ministers and networking is all done alongside the development and growth of New Start Highland, which remains my main focus. This is to make sure that we’re shaped in the best way possible to meet the needs of people in the area.And that’s why we’re here. We are here to serve and to create opportunity, to provide opportunity for people that probably wouldn’t get one without us.

In this way I think it is important to stay focussed. While all these areas of service and influence are fabulous, we exist in each of these other organisations for a very similar purpose and it’s to create the best opportunities that we can. This is to enable people to move from a time of hardship, crisis or challenge to a place that they can live a meaningful, enjoyable and fulfilling life. 

And while it is great that we can contribute to making Scotland a stronger and more viable place, that is not our prime focus. Our focus is to create change and be a vehicle for people so they can create change within themselves.