MIEnterprise Lothian

MIEnterprise is an innovative and award-winning social enterprise supporting people disadvantaged by disability or long-term health issues to plan, set-up, run and develop micro businesses as a flexible route into employment.

MIEnterprise is being established as a network of independent Community Interest Companies (CIC's) across the UK which are linked and supported by the MIEnterprise National Umbrella CIC. MIEnterprise Lothian was established in August 2012, and is the first of a number of planned replications across Scotland.

What MIEnterprise is:

- It is a social enterprise. We have set it up as a community interest company.
- People who join MIEnterprise will become members.
- It works as a marketing co-operative.
- It is what’s called a ‘mutual’.
- Members can buy shares in the company and vote on how it is run.
- Some members will be directors. Our rules say who and how.
- Members will run their own businesses but they can trade through MIEnterprise.
- MIEnterprise will also help them in lots of ways with their business.

We help members tell other people about their business, finding opportunities for them, and joining things up if they wish us to. Already we are finding that in all sorts of ways this works really well.

We work with individual people who want to start their own business. Sometimes these are called micro-enterprises. It doesn’t matter how small the businesses are.

Work is important for all sorts of reasons - money is just one of those things. A micro-enterprise can still give you all those other important things without earning a lot of money. They include how good you feel about yourself, how many people you know in your community, your relationship with them, and your sense of doing something for yourself.

We are finding already that MIEnterprise can offer something to people who thought that they could never get paid, and that it can be a real alternative to day services to support more people into work. We think that MIEnterprise can help in using some of the things we already have (resources like people, buildings, equipment) differently to help people get into work.