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December at The Growing Club: What’s On?

The final month of the year and we’re sure most people are ready to wave bye-bye to 2020 and welcome 2021 in what will hopefully be a better, happier and healthier year for us all.

Here’s our round-up of what’s happening at The Growing Club in December and running into January in the New Year.

Dates for your diary

10th December 2020 – join us online for a Christmas get-together? Let’s spread some seasonal cheer, celebrate friendship and close-off 2020 in style. The Growing Club’s Christmas Party will be on the 10th December. Come in a fancy-pants outfit or your Christmas cosy pyjamas. Bring your choice of festive food and drink, and join us for an afternoon of games, chat and cheer via Zoom. More information here and to book your free ticket, visit this link.

Last year’s Growing Club Christmas Party

17th December 2020 – Women in Business in Lancashire and Cumbria. This Federation of Small Businesses event will be hosted by The Growing Club’s Jane Binnion, focusing on women in business and taking care of our wellbeing. This event will be festive and fun! You can register for a free ticket here (spaces are limited).


12th January 2021 – The Sowing Club returns with new sessions in Morecambe beginning in the New Year. If you are unemployed, unwaged, or on benefits and you’re considering setting up your own business or job seeking in new employment, why not join us on this fully-funded skills training course? Read more and apply here.

20th January 2021 – in conjunction with Lancaster City Council, Scaleability and The Growing Club, the second cohort of our Peer-to-Peer-Mentoring course for women in the Lancaster district starts on the 20th January. If you’ve been in business for three years or more, you are eligible to apply. You can read more on this course and how to apply here.

Early next year, we will be running a second online cohort of Bloom and Grow, our business growth programme. You can read more about the programme here. Please subscribe to our newsletter for the announcement of new dates. 

Other news

Funding grant: we’re delighted to announce that we have been awarded funding from the Francis C Scott Charitable Trust, to run a brand-new pilot programme for unwaged young women in early 2021.

Francis C Scott Charitable Trust

Help us to help others – if you’re doing your Christmas shopping online, you can help to raise funds for The Growing Club by using the Fundraiser app. We’re now registered with easyfundraising, which means you can help us for free. Over 4,000 shops and sites will donate to us when you use easyfundraising to shop with them, with no extra cost to yourself. All you need to do is sign-up and remember to use easyfundraising whenever you shop online. You can find out more and sign-up via this link here.

 

Header photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Christmas Party

Christmas Cheer, Anyone?!

What a year it has been! With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating our year and lives, socialising properly in person has been all but a distant memory. So we may not be able to meet in person all together like we usually would, but we can still party on Zoom!

Join us online for a Christmas get-together? Let’s spread some seasonal cheer, celebrate friendship and close-off 2020 in style while looking forward to what we hope is a happier, healthier 2021 for us all.

When?

Thursday December 10, 2020. 12:30pm – 2:00pm, GMT.

Where?

In the Zoom Room! You can book via this link here.

Dress Code

Dress to impress if you like – a sparkly tiara and fancy-pants outfits are more than welcome! Or even your cosy Christmas onesie if you prefer. Bring your favourite tipple and nibbles.

There will be a prize for the best festive outfit!

Treat Yourself

We usually do a Secret Santa at our Christmas party, where everyone spends £5 or under on a gift for another Growing Club woman, so this year, why not treat yourself instead?

Using the magical connection of Zoom, we can spend this time together and allow us to create small group spaces for connecting in breakout rooms.

We’d love to see you there! You can book your place via this link.

Jane Binnion

WISE Woman of Lancaster: Jane Binnion!

We’re delighted to announce that our founding director, Jane Binnion, has been nominated for the Women of Inspiration list: The WISE List 2020, where 100 leading women have been nationally recognised for their contribution to UK social enterprise and impact investing during the COVID-19 pandemic, in partnership with social enterprise publication Pioneers Post and NatWest.

Jane has worked throughout the pandemic, supporting women in business and those who were just starting enterprises when the first UK lockdown occurred. She has prioritised mental and physical wellbeing in the network of women within The Growing Club, formulating a strategy around support and techniques to stay focussed and motivated with peer sessions and one-to-one coaching.

Face-to-face courses were quickly transformed to online experiences and offered wider than the Lancashire venues as previously existed. Weekly virtual drop-in Zoom sessions were used as goal-setting and check-in opportunities. 

Jane said:

“I am delighted to have been nominated for the WISE List, and thrilled to see so many women making an impact in social enterprise settings.

“COVID has been the most challenging situations we have found ourselves in, with the follow-on effects being devastating on so many people’s business and working situations, let alone the health impacts.

“The Growing Club CIC made it a priority to support and assist our network of women however we possibly could, and from the early days of the pandemic sweeping across the country, we discovered that women would be the worst hit on a business level. Our ethos has and always will be, that women need a level playing field in business, more than ever in a COVID and post-COVID economy. The UN3said that the lack of equality between men and women was still imbalanced before the pandemic, but when COVID hit, it was “layered on top of existing inequalities”. 

“Our work at The Growing Club helps us to strive to correct inequality through providing skills and entrepreneurial training, bespoke for women, so that they can thrive and progress sustainably.”

Tim West, founding editor of social enterprise publication, Pioneers Post, said: 

“Social entrepreneurs are by no means the only people who have had to face big pressures and make hard decisions during these unprecedented times – but what stands out in so many of these stories from our WISE network is that while battling to keep their own social enterprises from the jaws of the pandemic, their focus has remained on the mission, and their first thoughts have always been for the people and communities they were set up to serve.

“This year’s WISE Women are clearly showing Covid who’s boss. We’re so pleased that our partners at NatWest Social & Community Capital were keen to highlight these stories through our WISE programme this year, and are overwhelmed by the number of exceptional women who have been nominated.”

Heart of Gold - Zahra Moreea

November at The Growing Club: What’s On?

As the autumn creeps in with its beautiful colours and cooler temperatures, we are now in the second lockdown in the UK, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

However, our work at The Growing Club continues, albeit mostly virtually! You can find all of the workshops and courses that are on offer during November in our quick and handy round-up below.

4th, 11th, 18th & 25th November – The Sowing Club new cohort starts (and runs into December). This is a fully-funded, six-week skills training course for women who are unwaged or deemed to be socially disadvantaged. Read more about the course here.

9th November – Bloom and Grow – the second session of our 12-month business growth and sustainability programme. Find out more about this course, specifically designed for women already running their own business, at this link.

16th & 23th November – The Gratitude Gallery (with dates running into December) with photographer, Ginny Koppenhol. Ginny will facilitate a month-long phone photography gratitude practice, designed as a mood-boosting creative group activity, during these challenging times. 

The course will be weekly online workshops spread over four weeks, where you’ll learn phone photography and editing skills and use these to notice and record the aspects of your daily life that you feel grateful for. 

At the end of the course, Ginny will also create an online gallery of your images to share more widely representing your moments of appreciation, experienced and captured.  There are 10 spaces available 
Sessions are as follows (participants are asked to commit to all four): 1-2.30pm via Zoom. Click this link for more information and booking details.

20th November – Lancashire Women’s Peer Network begins. A funded programme from November to February is designed to provide a safe learning environment with trained facilitators. Women entrepreneurs and senior managers will be able to share the difficult issues their businesses are facing in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Find more information here.

26th November – Federation of Small Businesses, Mindful Management, with Dr Hazel Hardie. This session on Mindful Management will cover the 5 stages of mindful management. You will discover how to support the wellbeing of the people you work with, as well as creating an effective mindfulness practice for yourself. You will also learn about how to use mindfulness to improve your communication and relationships with others. Spaces are limited – to book online, click here.

30th November – Public Speaking Workshop: Find Your Voice, with theatre practitioner and facilitator, Emma Rucastle. The workshop will tackle the public speaking, which can be a worry for many small business owners, especially women, who have to present themselves and their businesses at a range of events – both formal and informal. In this interactive workshop, Emma will guide participants through a range of fun practical exercises, focusing on building confidence and finding your own voice. 10.00 – 12.30pm. Tickets are £10 and you can book online here.

Looking forward to December, there is a workshop is on creating and running effective Facebook adverts.  Love it or hate it, people are using Facebook during this pandemic, because it is convenient for many businesses. If you have products or services to sell you might want to join in. Sarah Tinsley from Tech and Toast is recording a tutorial for you to view and keep. This will be available in the last week of November, with a live Q&A via Zoom on December 2nd. For more information and to book this workshop, please click here.

If you have any questions on any of the above courses or workshops, please drop Jane a message

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Lancashire Women’s Peer Network

The Growing Club CIC is delighted to be part of the government initiative, Peer Networks, which brings together a diverse group of business owners and senior leaders as a group in a safe space, to discuss business challenges and how they can be overcome.

The initiative will be delivered through group sessions that are action-led and reflective, using peer feedback to create practical solutions for business blocks.

Build Back Better

Our expert facilitators, Jane Binnion and Lorraine Birch, will create the safe and supportive network needed to help build and strengthen your business. From finance and HR, crisis management, to sales and marketing challenges, the peer network will be a supportive arm to help you improve the overall performance of your business.

Why a Women’s Cohort? 

Even in the best of times, we know that women leaders of SMEs and not-for-profit organisations carry a large workload and worry on their own. It is clearly stated that women entrepreneurs have been heavily economically disadvantaged by the COVID19 pandemic. Female-led businesses, often in sectors vulnerable to economic shocks, have experienced a higher rate of closure during the lockdown, and many more are struggling with the unprecedented situation. 

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) have allocated funding for a Peer Networks Programme to support organisations through this difficult time. Knowing the specific challenges faced by women in business, The Growing Club, via Boost Lancashire, has secured a portion of this funding to run a cohort specifically for women in Lancashire. 

So what are Peer Networks? 

It is a known fact that accountability to our peers is a powerful motivator. 

The aim of this funded programme is to provide a safe learning environment with trained facilitators, where local women entrepreneurs and senior managers can share the difficult issues their businesses are facing in the current pandemic. 

Using action-learning methodology, any issues can be discussed within a supportive group framework, with the intention to create change.

Subject-specific trainers will also be available to offer assistance with any areas needed, such as finance, marketing, HR and recruitment. 

Course participants will receive: 

  • A total of 18 hours of action-learning group work, through 2.5 hour Zoom sessions each fortnight (with a break for Christmas). 
  • Two sessions of two hours, of one to one coaching. 

There are ten places available (only one place can be allocated per organisation)

The cohort starts on Friday 20th November 2020

Dates and Times

Sessions will run on a Friday morning, from 10am – 12.30pm

November 20th

December 4th

December 18th

January 8th

January 22nd

February 5th

February 19th (We are hopeful that this final group session might be a socially-distanced, face-to-face celebration)

Is this programme for you? 

Eligibility

– Women applying for the course will be the owner of a business, or a senior decision-maker within an organisation. 
– The business (including not-for-profit organisations) must be Lancashire-based.
– The organisation must have been operating for at least one year. 
– The business must be small to medium-sized (SME) with between 5 & 249 employers (associates count as employees for creative industries ).
– Business turnover must be £100,000+, pre-COVID19. 
– Participants will be women who value peer-support, collaboration and are open to learning.

How to apply

Fill in your details via this Eventbrite link here and we will send you an application form.

Once the completed application form has been submitted, the applicant will receive a telephone call to confirm eligibility and take some details. 

Participants will complete a detailed survey at the start, mid-point and end each the course, and also, at the end of each session, to enable quality monitoring and to capture the impact that the programme has upon the participating businesses. All information given will remain confidential and in accordance with GDPR. 

Women who accept a place on the course are expected to commit to the full length of the programme.

The Facilitators

Jane Binnion is a qualified and experienced adult trainer and group work facilitator. She is the owner of Ethical Business Training, author of The Heart of Sales and founder and MD of The Growing Club CIC, an employment and enterprise training organisation for women.

Lorraine Birch has been a business owner since 1996 and says she has: “latterly matured to become an experiential mentor/trainer, with an unending desire to see women in leadership roles build resilience, create long-term success by investing in themselves and identifying and confirming their inner skills.”

Any questions? Please email Jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk

To find out more about the Peer Networks initiative, click here.

To find out more about The Growing Club please visit our website here

Women in business

Support for Women-in-Business – in Lancaster, Lancashire & Beyond

Something for every woman-in-business in Lancaster, Lancashire and beyond. Affordable and funded support for you, and your business 

We know this is the hardest of times and so many of us are weary, but if you have started to turn your attention towards your business or employment possibilities again, then we have a huge selection of courses and opportunities coming up this term for you. And while we don’t normally blog about what’s on, we feel that right now, it would be really helpful to bring it all together in one place for a nice, easy read.

So here goes, in date order…

October

We have very carefully started face-to-face delivery again this week, as we ran the first session of the new cohort of our start-up programme. It was equally odd and wonderful to meet together after seven long months of delivering courses via Zoom. 

Growth & Sustainability

While we adapted our work and course to online delivery via Zoom, we saw that women joined us from all over the UK and beyond, so we are still offering online courses. In fact, we are very excited to be offering our popular growth and sustainability programme as an online course for the first time, starting this month. So if you are interested in this course but don’t want to travel to Lancaster, this might be the perfect solution for you. It’s incredibly affordable*, convenient and we have condensed the curriculum into a six-month programme. You can find all of the details and how to book, here

Peer Mentoring

Our Peer Mentoring programme for women running businesses in Lancaster is going so well, we are opening a second cohort on October 14th. This is a fabulous initiative where you train as a mentor – a great life skill – and you also get your own trained mentor for 12-months. Working in partnership with Lancaster City Council on the COVID-19 Recovery & Resilience Initiative, this comprehensive training programme is fully funded for women who have been in business for at least three years. If this interests you, you can apply here.

November

Employment & Enterprise Skills Training

With high rates of unemployment right now, we are pleased to be able to restart our Employment and Enterprise Skills Training courses for women who are unwaged and looking for their ‘What next?’ opportunity.


Working in collaboration with the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), we can offer this fully-funded, small group course to you if you are in Lancashire, deemed to be economically inactive and want support to help you take the next steps. 

The next course is face-to-face, starting on 4th November and is based in Lancaster. You can book your place via this link here

Medium-sized businesses?

We have also been awarded a contract to deliver a brand-new UK government initiative of peer-to-peer action learning for women running businesses or not-for-profits in Lancashire, who, up to the pandemic, had £100k+ turnover. 

This programme consists of 18-hours of action learning plus four-hours of one-to-one coaching. The training is fully-funded and it will run every two weeks, on a Friday morning, starting mid-November. Please note this course is limited to just 10 places. If you would like to apply for a place, please email Jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk for an application form.

In addition, we are running our monthly skills workshops and weekly drop-in sessions via Zoom. Follow our Facebook page to stay up to date

 If you have questions about any of the above, please email jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk

*If you are a woman running a business in Lancashire who wants to join this programme but have a cash-flow problem right now, Boost Lancashire has agreed to pay your fees as a Pay-It Forward grant. That means that you get the support you need now, and when you’re back on your feet, you pay for other women to do the same.

Bloom and Grow Goes Global!

Are you a woman running a small business which has been impacted by the pandemic? 

Then we have some good news!

Pandemic problems

We don’t need to tell you that the pandemic has been hard on all of us who run small businesses and not-for-profit organisations.

Many of us had a crash-course in online tools and those who were able to, adapted to working online. Whilst it was not perfect, it had its positives and we learnt some good lessons.

One of the learning points for us was, by delivering our work via Zoom, we reached a much wider audience. We were delighted that women were able to join us from far and wide.  In fact, many women have asked us to continue delivering some of our work online, as it saves travel time, and is just very convenient for some.

So, that got us thinking. Our inclusive, female-focussed, peer-based employment and enterprise training is pretty unusual. We are often asked to run our courses elsewhere in the country, but we simply have not had the resources to do it. By adapting our work the way we did during the lockdown, it helped us to realise that we could, in fact, deliver our programmes on a global basis. All without any of us leaving the comfort of our home or office.

Accessible business training

And so, our business growth and sustainability programme, Bloom and Grow, is launching as an online course in October. 

Making courses like this available digitally is so important right now. It will help to support the recovery and resilience of female-led businesses, particularly because during lock-down, so many women took on the roles of homeschooling and caring duties. This meant that there was little time or energy left for their own business. 

We’re very happy that running our Bloom and Grow course online makes it accessible to female business owners who are:


* unable to travel/reach Lancashire & Cumbria
* living outside of North West England and the UK
* looking to create sustainable growth post-COVID19
* looking to gain all the benefits without the travel
* enjoy the business benefits of a highly-subsidised business education programme!


⁠While life is still so unpredictable it means we can provide:


* Sustainable post-COVID19 business education
* Peer support for business development and growth
* Accountability 

All while working from where you are. And even better still, as part of our commitment to support economic recovery, we have significantly reduced the price. 

⁠This course helps you to focus on your business growth and sustainability as we navigate our way through this strange new time.  

For full details and to apply for a place today on the online Bloom and  Grow course, just click this link.

If you would like to read about the impact that our business growth course has had on other women running small businesses, please take a look at our blogs.

Back Her Business

In September 2019, The Growing Club became a regional business support delivery partner for the NatWest Back Her Business Initiative.

It has been a big concern for us that women starting a business can’t get seed funding, and if someone is starting a business from being on state benefits, which quite a few Growing Club start-ups are, finding money for simple items such as business cards is a big deal, let alone a website, laptop or other essential equipment.

For us, Back her Business is a great initiative for women start-ups because crowdfunding brings in much-needed support and NatWest match the fund – up to 50% of the target. In addition, it’s a fantastic marketing exercise.

But it isn’t easy. It takes time and energy and it can be scary. After all, it involves asking for help and money: two things that don’t always come easily.

In this video, Jane Binnion interviews two women – Helen Dixon and Elaine Remy – who ran successful crowdfunder campaigns during the COVID-19 lockdown.  The interview shows what it’s really like to crowdfund, answering questions posed by women interested in running their own crowdfunding campaign, as well as Helen and Elaine’s top tips for success.

If you are interested in using Back Her Business to kick-start your start-up, you will find full details here, or email Jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk to discuss your idea and see how we can support you. 

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Peer-to-Peer Mentoring for Women in Business

It’s widely recognised that women thrive from mentoring and therefore mentoring is recommended as a strategy in supporting recovery and long-term sustainability for women in business and leadership. However, most mentoring offered is short-term, only around 12-hours and in reality, finding a mentor that understands you, is not always easy.

We have an innovative programme available which is designed to provide skilled, peer-mentors for 12 women, for a non-hierarchical, longer-term mentoring relationship. 

The Growing Club was originally set up because the founding director, Jane Binnion, had been disappointed in the quality of business mentors available. She knew as a woman, a single mum and a carer, that peer-to-peer mentoring was what she needed: someone who understood her, who she could talk to and who and would challenge and support her. Yet, she was unable to find exactly what she was looking for.

Since 2016, The Growing Club has been delivering peer work, via action learning and buddy schemes, within supportive groups where every person’s contribution matters. In 2018, we trained our first group of mentors to support female start-ups for three years, because we knew that to be really beneficial, mentoring should ideally be a longer-term relationship.

We know that mentoring works, and we know that non-hierarchical mentoring, between two equal parties, is hugely successful when both parties are fully committed. And we know that to build women’s confidence and resilience muscles, we need to create longer-term relationships, where trust can be built for those difficult conversations. 

In May this year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we wrote about women being left behind in business support. For so many, home-schooling and caring responsibilities were left to women. 

We called for ring-fencing of funding to support those women, to recognise the important role that they played and to enable them to catch up, and bring their business back up to speed. 

And with that in mind, we are delighted that, as part of the Lancaster City Council COVID Recovery and Resilience Programme, we have funding to train 12 women as peer-mentors. This means that 12 local women running small businesses will benefit from both being trained as a mentor and receive a monthly mentor session – for two years, and longer of course, if they choose.

All participants will be put through a 20-hour programme (plus homework) to give them the skills and experience to mentor and be mentored by a peer, to support their business for growth and sustainability.

The course starts on September 14th, with a second cohort beginning on the 20th January 2021, and is open to any women in the Lancaster and Morecambe area who has been running a business, in any sector, for at least three years, and has business growth aspirations.

This funded programme is for you, if you:

 are a woman running a small business in Lancaster District

 have been trading for at least 3 years

 would value having a mentor

 want to support other women’s business growth

 can commit to working as a peer mentor for 2 years.

 understand the importance of mentoring as a tool of empowerment

Priority will be given to women whose business has been negatively impacted by the pandemic.

The course will initially be online and the trainers are Jane Binnion and Paul Aisthorpe. 

The nature of this initiative – to build resilience – means that it is a two-year commitment. As places are limited, we reserve the right to charge the full price of the training for participants who do not complete the programme. After all, reliability is a key requirement for a mentor!

Interested? Fill in the application form via this link.

Additionally, if you have been running your business for at least one year, and have fallen through the net in terms of government financial support, you may be eligible to receive a funded place on our business growth and sustainability programme. Apply via this link or for more information drop Jane an email: jane@thegrowingclub.co.uk

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The Growing Club Stories: Wendy Jones

My name is Wendy Jones and I run WJ Cleaning Company.  My journey started in 2013 when I suddenly and unexpectedly became a single mum.  At the time, I was a stay-at-home mum who volunteered in my son’s school.  It was a very traumatic time for both myself and my son and the will to survive kicked in. So, I got a job as a teaching assistant and set up an ironing service which meant I could work at home and care for my son.

My ironing customers started asking for cleaning services as they knew my standards were high. As my son got older, I took on more cleaning work. I loved working in school but soon realised I could not progress, so I looked at taking on a staff member to help with the cleaning and the rapidly-increasing number of customers. 

I put a note up on Facebook asking who could help me grow and employ staff and up popped Jane Binnion! Before I knew it, I was pitching my business ideas (along with nine other startups) to a group of 10 business people in front of an audience who had paid to watch. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work with a business coach and marketing coach for six months, which gave me the confidence to leave my ‘proper’ job and run the business full time.

I also undertook the Bloom and Grow programme with Jane and The Growing Club, which gave me the foundations and confidence I needed to grow. Since then, my business has grown, albeit in an up-and-down kind of way, but Jane and The Growing Club have been there when I needed them, whether that is just to let off steam in the drop-in or do one of the many workshops around subjects like social media and marketing etc. I was able to sell my house to buy somewhere larger with my mum so she can help with childcare and I can help her which further strengthened my foundations to concentrate on the business.

At the beginning of this year, we had just started cleaning for a large business in Carnforth, as well as all the residential properties we still did.  I had a team of around four people who I could offer regular employment to, alongside a couple of self-employed cleaners who helped out when needed.  

Like millions of others, I was then halted in my tracks by the global pandemic. My overwhelming thoughts were with my staff. As a result of the timings I was not able to furlough any of them, which was a disaster. I had one cleaner stranded in Kartoum and another who had to shield. 

Residential cleaning was not viable and we could not work from home.   Again, all through this, The Growing Club and mentor were there for advice and support, having quickly made all their services available online.

My son has additional needs and was being home-schooled and my mum was in the clinically extremely vulnerable group. Left with no alternative, I paused the business. 

However, I had had a taste of what things could be like running a business and managing and training a team, and I am confident I will do it again. Customers are coming back but unfortunately, the large commercial clean has stopped for the foreseeable future. 

I have spent time training and getting to understand exactly how this pandemic will change the cleaning industry. I feel passionate about providing good employment and training to a workforce who have largely been seen as ‘unskilled.’ Effective commercial cleaning is going to be a vital part of the economy’s recovery. It has made me all the more determined to provide a high-quality, effective cleaning service alongside great employment opportunities for staff.  

The cleaning industry is very supportive of one another and I have formed relationships with wonderful people and businesses across the world.  This pandemic has made us all think and prioritise what is important for us and our businesses.  The Growing Club is one of those things that I would have been lost without, both before and during this unprecedented time.

I am looking forward to recruiting more staff, training and supporting businesses as they open up to this new world – none of which would have been achievable without The Growing Club and the wonderful people I have met through it. We will shortly become a limited company, ready for growth again. We are very lucky in Lancashire to have this invaluable resource!

Coronavirus

Coronavirus: Have Women Fallen Off The Business Agenda Again?

The Growing Club runs employment and enterprise training for women in North West England.

When coronavirus hit, we were unable to continue with our training programme in our usual face-to-face delivery, in small groups. However, we have continued to work from our homes and we adapted quickly to the lockdown situation, delivering all of our programmes online within a week, with additional programmes added to our offering. As we received the government small business grant, we prioritised to keep going, paying the team and ensuring we were around to support the many women we work with.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) conducted their Quarterly Labour Force Survey and found that women and young people (under 25s) were more likely to be disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with long-term economic consequences for these groups. This, they believe, is due to the groups being more likely to hold employment in areas that have been forced to close down due to the pandemic and social distancing requirements, like restaurants and hotels for example. 

And the UN has also issued a warning of the global COVID-19 crisis increasing inequalities for women. The UN’s senior gender adviser, Nahla Valji, said:

“There is no single society where we’ve achieved equality between men and women, and so this pandemic is being layered on top of existing inequalities, and it’s exacerbating those inequalities.”

We surveyed women within our network, on the impacts of COVID-19 has had on their own businesses. Some of the themes that have arisen include:

Businesses

The responses received showed that the majority of women have been affected by the pandemic, with many businesses needing to close. One respondent stated: 

“My business has ‘fallen off the edge of a cliff’ and I have furloughed myself.” 

Finances

The impacts for women whose businesses have suffered under the pandemic are varied, with several women stating that their income has been dramatically reduced and they’re unsure what the future holds. 

One respondent stated:

“I had to stop working mid-March. It has been tough, not just financially, but emotionally too.  I have had to apply for Universal Credit which is upsetting as I was getting to the point that I was reaching the point where I wasn’t needing benefits for much longer.”

Home-schooling

Many women have assumed full caring responsibilities for young children, along with having to teach them from home. Several of those children have additional needs, resulting in the women being unable to work on their own business, if it is still active.

The pressures of taking on a domestic role, with often the male partner working full time from home.

One respondent stated:

“[My business has] totally stalled since I am now trying to home-school children. I’m not making anything…I don’t have the energy to work on online selling.”

Wellbeing

Many women report feelings of overwhelm, with tiredness and worry impacting them on a day-to-day basis. Lots have reported being proactive in dealing with these feelings, and trying to prioritise self-care, through yoga, meditation and other methods.

Maintaining support for our women

Our plan for prioritising the women from our network has worked well so far – the women appreciate that we have stayed around to help them stay focussed and motivated during a tough time. The weekly virtual drop-in sessions have become weekly goal-setting and check-in sessions. Keeping in touch and helping to keep women buoyant has become our priority. 

We have even added new programmes: a daily 10-minute neck and shoulder exercise session live on our Facebook page; weekly Monday morning workshops to help women start the week well, prioritise and stay focussed; and we have even launched a women and leadership course.

Urgent concerns

However, we are also very concerned by what we are seeing and hearing from some of the women who use our services.

We already know women are hit hardest by poverty.

There is still an assumption that this country is one of happy, nuclear families.

The reality is some women and children are now in lockdown with abusive and violent partners and some women are having to live on next to no income. One woman who has been self-employed for just over a year, not only has to wait until June for her self-employment support payment, but also expects to only get £95 a month. She is a single mum.

The hardest thing for us to see is women unable to participate. Women with young children on our  employment skills course had to immediately drop-out.

And women running businesses are unable to give attention to their enterprise when they have  caring responsibilities. We fully understand that keeping safe is priority and we are totally reinforcing that message. But what it means in real terms, is that small businesses led by women with caring responsibilities will fall behind those run by men, and that women are carrying that responsibility even when they have a male partner at home furloughed, or also self-employed.

We talk a lot about women doing the double shift – running a business and a home. But this situation has really demonstrated that domestic responsibilities are not shared equally, even when they can be. 

The outcome of that is women cannot attend to their business, or take part in the many business support sessions being delivered via Zoom.

We are guilty of that too. We have a number of sessions running at 12.30 . It’s normally not a problem, but in these times of all children being home-schooled, it’s now the children’s lunch break. We are aware now and have made changes, but this situation is not being heard at all by business support leaders – because it’s just another ‘women’s issue’. 

What are the consequences of ignoring this? 

While the business support world is all about getting the economy restarted, post-COVID19. There is no sense of how many businesses are run by women. The impact on local economies and individual families who once again find themselves struggling on low incomes is going to be huge. We would like to see national statistics on the business impacts on women from COVID-19, but it’s unlikely there will be any.

Post-lockdown, we absolutely must place great weight on creating a level playing field for women. Extra financial support should be prioritised for women running small businesses, on a local and national recovery agenda, because these women have had the critical jobs of caring for and educating our children, caring for the elderly and running homes at the expense of their own businesses. 

It’s heart-breaking. So many women were just getting into their stride, building businesses on their own terms, using their skills and gaining confidence.

We can no longer say we are planning for economic recovery without planning for economic equality.

We will recover, but once again, it will be done with women having one hand tied behind them.