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The Queen comes to visit!
13 Mar 2008
During a royal tour of the East London Tate & Lyle sugar refinery today, HM The Queen paid a visit to Auction My Stuff, the venture set up by Social Enterprise Ambassador Chris Allwood to help unemployed young people to get the skills, experience and confidence they need to enter the world of work.
The Queen was given a demonstration of how to sell on Auction My Stuff’s eBay shop by Nyron Walters, 24, who is 6 weeks through a 10-week work placement, and watched as Nyron photographed and prepared items for sale.
Social enterprises are profit-making businesses set up for a social or environmental purpose which reinvest the bulk of their profits.
Auction My Stuff sells items donated by companies (often merchandise or out of season stock) and on behalf of other charities for commission. The profits of the business are reinvested back into the parent charity, Community Links. Young people are referred to Auction My Stuff by New Deal and other local projects to work for 10-week placements running the company.
Chris Allwood, founder of Auction My Stuff and a Social Enterprise Ambassador, said:
“We were delighted to welcome The Queen today and have an opportunity to show how social enterprise can provide opportunities and ways of working that simply could not be delivered any other way. Auction My Stuff has just turned one and during this time we’ve provided 50 work placements to young people while raising over £40,000 for charity. By giving young people their first flavour of working life and responsibility for running a business they gain an extraordinary level of confidence – over 50% of our young people are now in permanent work or education.”
The visit was part of a tour by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh to Tate & Lyle’s historic sugar refinery in Silvertown, London, to commemorate 130 years of sugar refining at the site. The refinery is also home to Auction My Stuff, with Tate & Lyle offering financial support and rent free space to enable the venture to start.