Community Enterprise Wales

Community Enterprise Wales
The Innovation Centre, Festival Drive, Victoris Business Park, Ebbw Vale, NP23 8XA
Telephone 01495 356734

Community Enterprise Wales was established in 1993 as a Company Limited by guarantee.

Our Mission Statement

To promote the concept of Community Economic Regeneration through community enterprise as a mechanism for providing quality, sustainable employment, training opportunities and local services: Wales wide through networking, supporting, lobbying and informing.

Our Main Objectives are:

Gaining continued recognition for the success of community enterprises in Wales
Publicising an awareness of community enterprise development objectives and practice
Re-enforcing the roles identified by Community Enterprise Wales for its work in the fields of networking, community enterprise development and support
Attracting resources for community enterprise development to reach its potential
Influencing policies and legislation which affect the community enterprise movement
Securing Community Enterprise Wales’s future

CEW aims to:

Serve the needs of members businesses, organisations and individuals
Promote the ethos of community leadership, management and creation of wealth for communities
Promote the concept of Community Enterprise at regional (Wales) and national level (UK)
Encourage networking and partnership between members
Provide a forum for discussion of issues relevant to the Community
Maintain local authority commitment to and support of community enterprise in the face of restrictive financial settlements
Mainstream community enterprise on a cross sector, all party basis
Ensure the growth of support for community enterprise activity in Europe
Continue to find major business and financial support for the sector so they begin to appreciate community enterprise as part of the mainstream pattern of economic development
Ensure that all members continue to benefit at all levels from the strategic approach of CEW
Increase partnership and direct working with our community businesses

CEW’s role in economic development:
CEW believes a community Enterprise is ‘a private business with a social conscience’.

Economic Development is not just about job and wealth creation: it should also be about creating socially and environmentally healthy communities where fresh economic activity can thrive. This creates a healthy basis for all forms of social and economic development. Community Enterprise is one of the more effective tools for doing this, bringing with it a positiveness and increase in economic activity.
Two of the main approaches for fostering economic development in disadvantaged communities to date have been efforts to secure inward investment and the encouragement of self-employment. Neither course leads to significant sustainable activity during deep recession; community enterprise provides an opportunity for a cost effective alternative.
Over the past few years both Regional and National Government have started to see the economic as well as social benefits of Community Enterprise. Community Enterprise can be a growth activity where other businesses cease.
In many areas it is already acknowledged that previously recognised methods for economic growth no longer work whatever the prevailing circumstances. New and more lateral thinking needs to be applied. This is a window of opportunity for community enterprise.

CEW’S role in Wales:
There is a thriving community enterprise culture in both urban and rural Wales.
The reasons for growth in Community Businesses and Social Firms are job losses, lack of services, unemployment, and the market opportunities, but the models they follow are diverse.

Today there are 500+ Community Businesses/Social Firms in Wales pumping £35m into the Welsh Economy every year.

The range of businesses are enormous: cafés, laundrettes, crèche/nursery facilities, activity and adventure holidays, bookshops, training providers, art and craft shops, galleries and garden centres to name but a few.

Many of the changes in Wales have come about as a result of the hard work by Community Enterprise Wales on behalf of its members. CEW has lobbied hard to get Community Enterprise into the mainstream, where it is now recognised as an important component in economic development planning at local, regional and national level.

The establishment of the National Assembly in 1999, along with the new range of funds and funders has improved the situation since CEW was established nearly 10 years ago. The introduction of the Community Fund (formerly National Lottery), the New Opportunities Fund, the Coalfield Regeneration Trust and others is a good start, but there is still a long way to go.