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MKS Room

Date
Aug 26th
Time
18:00 - 21:00
Location
Price
Free

What is a MKS Room?

MKS Room are recorded events blending live performance and talks connecting art and social entrepreneurship. By using music and culture, our mission is to promote social business and make it accessible to everyone. Previous events are listed at music.makesense.org

MKS Room is a worldwide network of events organised in more than 80 cities in the past two years by local Make Sense Communities.

MakeSense is a 32,000 network of volunteers across the globe, (and growing) that support social entrepreneurs solve important challenges providing them tangible and applicable solutions.

What’s happening this month?

This month MKS Room aims to gather people and create a meaningful conversation about Female homelessness. With the additional support of two amazing UK based music artists , MKS Room will outline potential solutions to an issue affecting thousand of women every year. MKS Room will bring on stage experienced social entrepreneurs active in the field since several years.

Why female homelessness? Why now? Why in London? What do we want?

Too often services are failing to address the problems faced by women sleeping rough or in invisible homelessness conditions.

According to Alexia Murphy (Director at St Mungo’s) “Women make up 26% of people who accessed homelessness services in 2013, which in real numbers is around 10,000 people. At the sharpest end of homelessness, 786 women were recorded sleeping rough in London last year”. The overall number of people recorded sleeping rough has risen by 37% since 2010 and the exact number seems to be much higher.

We also know that “there are high levels of vulnerability within the female homeless population – mental ill-health, drug and alcohol dependencies, childhoods spent in care, experiences of sexual abuse and other traumatic life experiences are all commonplace” (Crisis.org)

With the extra cuts in welfare happening now, this can only get worse for all involved.

What it could help?

Social Entrepreneurs set up businesses that tackle social issues  by providing a strong business model. Some of them seems to have valid practical solutions to help women falling into the dark zone of homeless.

MKS Room will introduce you to some great social entrepreneurs and will provide you guidelines to understand how to help them to accelerate their impact.

Who will join MKS Room on stage?

Sharon Poon – Marylebone Project

The Marylebone Project is the largest hostel in the United Kingdom for women affected by homelessness. Sharon runs the social enterprise arm which consists of Space in Marylebone (facilities management) and Munch in Marylebone (catering). It involves some serious stuff (internal & external marketing, strategic planning, budgeting, working with external partners) and some fun stuff (taste testing, baking).

In April 2015, Sharon became the Centre Manager which involves running the operations of the Day Centre for rough sleepers. She is responsible to run activities programme and developing more employment opportunities for service users. She creates partnership opportunities with external stakeholders for fundraising and volunteering.

More info at  www.churcharmy.org.uk/madeinmarylebone

Faye Shields – Unseen Tours

Faye is the founder of Unseen Tours an award-winning, not-for-profit social enterprise that offers alternative walking tours through London’s most vibrant and interesting neighbourhoods, with homeless and formerly homeless guides

Each guide takes visitors through a different area of London, showing both famous landmarks and hidden gems off-the-beaten track, with their own distinctive styles, and sharing their own stories and views of homelessness.

As a social enterprise, the guides receive 60% of the ticket sales. The remaining 40% is reinvested into a common kitty out of which the guides also receive their monthly travel and mobile phone-top ups, meaning that, in real terms, they get around 80% of total ticket revenue.

Unseen Tours offer a unique insight into London life – while giving visibility and a voice to people who often feel unseen and unheard.

 

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