Support our local communities
Join us as a mentor to support the entrepreneurs of tomorrow or partner with us to enable local businesses to thrive.
We are looking for volunteer businesspeople to join a team of mentors to support people from all backgrounds who want to start a business.
Our mission is to create employment and transform deprived areas into thriving communities through bringing the talents of local people and local enterprises into collaborative networks.
We achieve this through a dynamic combination of enterprise training, business support and practical help delivered with empathy and commitment.
Our approach is one of constructive encouragement. For us, NO idea is a bad idea – the challenge is to help the client to work out for themselves how successful the idea might be.
You will be trained in our unique 3M© business model, which we have used to support hundreds of people find the right idea for them and to get it started.
Business Support
Are you a business trainer or consultant who can give your time to help train the business people of tomorrow? Find out about the courses we run.
Donate
Your donation which will help people with great ideas to get started in business and provide them with mentoring and business advice.
Your donation will also allow us to continue to provide affordable office space in Lambeth and Southwark for those news businesses and, for residents of those boroughs who are new start-ups. With your help we are helping grow local economies.
Tree Shepherd fosters meaningful relationships with residents borough-wide.
Tree Shepherd is a trusted, established social enterprise which fosters meaningful relationships with residents borough-wide and delivers results. Our approach is based on understanding residents’ needs, and patiently supporting them.
In order that local authorities are better able to reach their social objectives, a package of support for start-ups that is sensitive to community ability and need is essential. Even from school age, local authority provision continues to focus on the ‘journey to jobs’ without including the entrepreneur option.
It is clear from our social impact reporting that we are bringing about positive, meaningful change in the lives of borough residents. Through our intervention, entrepreneurialism is enabled, meaningful employment for local people is triggered and employability skills are raised.
Tree Shepherd works with a number of housing associations to help improve and enrich the lives of residents.
Most recently, Hexagon Housing approached us to help local residents set up their own businesses, responding to a growing interest in self-employment within the area they worked.
The Community Investment Team (CIT) initially trialled a business advice service, but soon realised residents required a package of support. Tree Shepherd then went on to deliver a comprehensive Start Your Own Enterprise programme and develop a start-up network.
By the end of the programme 100% of the respondents said they were ‘confident‘ at starting their own business, with 42% ‘very confident’. We continue to work closely with the CIT and support them as the local businesses flourish.
“It proved to be a very valuable experience in many ways. I definitely have been prepared to enter the world of business ownership.” — Nichola Williams, Participant
Established companies and even private individuals can help in so many ways…
We have new businesses that need mentoring, markets that needs sponsoring, people who need training, data that needs to be analysed, enterprises that need investment, schemes that need marketing, stories that need telling.
If you and your colleagues would like to get involved we would be delighted to meet and work out the best way to put your skills, resources and experience into supporting our amazing communities.
We are working with a number of developers to help local people and traders through this regeneration period.
Through our empathetic approach we help deliver a development that enables new businesses to start up and thrive and helps existing businesses to continue trading.
Tree Shepherd is working with British Land on the re-development of Surrey Quays and the Canada Water Masterplan. We have been contracted to deliver community engagement, business workshops, clinics, and the management of a new community and business hub, THRIVE.
We are working with Southwark Council on the re-development of the Elephant and Castle, the site development being managed by Delanceys. We have been assisting traders throughout the entire process, forming business plans, helping, wherever possible, over 70 traders re-locate, and running courses and workshops.
Tree Shepherd developed a local enterprise network in South Bermondsey to support local people into self-employment and build a stronger local economy. We delivered four Start Your Own Enterprise courses funded by Grosvenor, in collaboration with Big Local Works, South Bermondsey Partnership and United St Saviours.
Mitie worked with Tree Shepherd to paint our co-working space GLOWS in Tulse Hill, creating a vibrant and professional office and makerspace for us to encourage entrepreneurship and give local people a space to grow their businesses.
Lendlease sponsored Tree Shepherd outreach programme ‘Enterprise Up’ through the Elephant and Castle Community Fund. This enabled us to deliver training events in Elephant and Castle which supported stall holders, kiosk operatives, independent retail and catering unit owners to re-develop their businesses in light of the pending regeneration.
