International Women’s Day: Wonderful women and organisations in the social enterprise sector

International Women’s Day is celebrated yearly on March 8. It is a focal point in the women’s rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as reproductive rights, gender equality, and violence and abuse against women. This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity, putting a focus on how people should be treated fairly and impartially, regardless of gender.

This International Women’s Day, we would like to shout out some wonderful women and organisations, from the social enterprise sector, who do amazing things for their communities and individuals.

1.Nickala Torkington from Flourish Together CIC

Nickala is the co-founder and director of Flourish.

Flourish is a network that supports women in social businesses, seeking to work with people who share the same values, are strong advocates for social change and want to form part of their nurturing environment.

Impact

The Flourish Network has benefited more than 1,200 women changemakers so far – and continues to increase these numbers. We have had the pleasure of working with many of these fantastic women – upskilling them in our media workshops to support their social enterprise ideas to flourish!

Nickala has also just been announced as making the shortlist for another national award, WISE100 Social Business Leader of the Year

Learn some more about Flourish and its fantastic work here.

2.Vic Turnball from Mic Media

Vic Turnball is the founder of Mic Media, her goal is to help people voice their stories through podcasting, especially if they are underrepresented. Vic is a right good egg!

Mic Media are the social enterprise sector podcast experts, they work to produce a podcast for you/ your company, or offer training so that companies, charities and fellow social enterprises can produce their own and get their stories heard.

Yellow Jigsaw and Mic Media

We have worked with Vic many times, she delivered excellent training to your Talking About My Generation reporters to upskill them on all things podcasts, take a look here. You can also see what our media director, Kirsty Day, had to say about Mic Media’s training here.

3. Inspire Women Oldham

Founded by Sally Bonnie, Inspire Women is all about women working together to connect with themselves and their community.

We worked with the fantastic women at Inspire Women Oldham to create a female-led media team called StrongHER Together, giving a voice to the women on subjects that matter most to them.

You can see the results of that work here – from news writing to video creation and podcasting.

Learn more about Inspire Women, and what they offer here.

4.Elevate

Katie Robson and Ilona Alcock founded Elevate, a business development consultancy with a keen focus on training, networking and events to explore innovation, sustainability, and community.

Elevate offer great training such as:

• Carbon Literacy
• Leadership
• Public Speaking

Impact

Elevate has worked with lots of businesses across the north over the years, helping their leaders develop, their colleagues become more aware of their carbon footprint and put on events, conferences and parties. Yellow Jigsaw and our Media Cubs project have loved working with Elevate to create video content for their Northern Gamechangers awards and also loved that we were able to put fantastic role models in front of our mini reporters in an online press conference.

Learn some more about Elevate here.

5. Art with Heart

Creative Director’s Sarah and Rachel founded Art with Heart in 2010, believing that, “when people come together, they can do amazing things”.

Art with Heart is an award-winning arts company, which design and deliver performances, workshops and people-led creative projects for community groups, arts organisations and schools across the UK.

Yellow Jigsaw and Art with Heart

Our Media Cubs mini reporters created a short film about their community, in collaboration with Art with Heart. You can read the blog and watch the video here.

And we have also worked along side them on other creative projects including Stan at Z-Arts.

For more information on working alongside the team at Yellow Jigsaw – check out what we do here.