In the first year of the programme, you'll get a £30k salary. Together we'll develop your business model and approach funders and investors to help your idea grow.
You'll get desk space in a supportive office alongside a growing community of social entrepreneurs.
You'll receive ongoing guidance and feedback on your idea from Catch22's frontline delivery experts, services and partners. You'll also get a dedicated mentor.
I never saw myself as a social entrepreneur, but with Catch22’s support we’re now ready to turn our vision for a new type of children’s care home into a reality.
Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, Founder and CEO of Lighthouse
You have direct experience of the problems that you are trying to tackle, either as a result of your own life experiences or because you have experience of delivering relevant services on the frontline.
Your idea may only exist on paper for now or you may be a little bit more established. Crucially, we must be able to see how we can add value to your idea.
Your idea must connect to the work that Catch22 does. We help people get into jobs, find apprenticeships, we help families who are in trouble, we work in schools and in prisons, and we work to help young people and adults build better lives.
Your idea should focus on building a better world – creating a society where everyone has a good place to live, good people around them, and feel like they have a purpose.
Sponsorship means someone from Catch22 has supported your application. We are doing this so applicants can get feedback and guidance on their application at an earlier stage of the process. Don’t worry if you don’t know anyone at Catch22, we still want to hear from you! More details are available on this below.
Chris Wright, CEO of Catch22
Caught in the justice system for more than 10 years, Mifta turned his life around and now supports young people to develop resilience and aspiration. Youth Ink facilitates honest and open discussions between young people and ex-offenders, to produce interventions for those at risk of entering the justice system. Mifta has engaged more than 200 young people in his award winning programme.
Parenting is the greatest factor influencing a child’s development. Gaps in early years create lifelong, intergenerational inequality. The answer? Devie. It’s a virtual coach to support parents’ goals and wellbeing alongside existing family support services, developed by designer Puja and early childhood educator Laura.
Tracy wants to help people with learning disabilities, mental health problems and autistic spectrum disorders enter the workforce. She plans to create an ethical employment agency that will support adults with learning disabilities to find work.
Launched in 2016 by Yorkshire’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Jacob launched Offploy to support people with criminal convictions into meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment. Offploy works with both employers and employees, to address the UK’s chronic skills shortage, to reduce reoffending and to make society safer for all.
Founded by Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, Lighthouse aims to revolutionise children’s care homes in the UK. After spending time in children's care homes and researching best practice models across Europe, he has developed a model that aims to improve outcomes for the children that in live in these homes. Lighthouse will to open its first children’s care home in 2020.
Rachael Box created the London Village Network (LVN) in response to her frustrations at the lack of opportunities available for at-risk young people on her estate. Now operating across ten London boroughs, LVN aims to become the go to app for youth workers, young people and volunteers seeking easy access to services, support and volunteering.
Natasha Porter was inspired to setup Unlocked Graduates after an influential 2016 review of prison education. Unlocked Graduates attracts high-calibre graduate talent to work in the UK prison service and inject new ideas, insights and energy into the rehabilitation of prisoners. To date, it has placed 150 prison officers in 14 prisons that house over 10,000 prisoners across London and the South East. It aims to be operating in 20% of public prisons in England in the near future.
Catch22 have given us the structure and support we needed to be able to launch and now scale Unlocked. Catch22 incubation is invaluable: it is relational rather than transactional, and for me this aspect has made it particularly authentic and therefore effective.
Natasha Porter, CEO and Founder of Unlocked Graduates
As an organisation that delivers a wide range of public services, we are able share our delivery expertise and provide access to relevant services as you explore and test your ideas.
We know how difficult it is to reimagine how public services should be delivered. For this reason, our programme last two years. We believe this will help you navigate the personal and professional challenges you will undoubtedly face on this journey.
We work with a maximum of five social entrepreneurs at any one time. This means we are able offer you support that is tailored to your needs.
You own your ideas - we don’t seek an equity stake in exchange for our support. We are focused on positively reimagining the delivery of public services and creating new ways of collaboration across the charitable sector.
Our work with social entrepreneurs is two-way learning process. We don't have all the answers. We are excited to see how your presence and ideas can make us better at what we do.
When applications re-open you will be able to access the application form by clicking the button below and answer our initial questions. Once you do this, we will send you an email with a link to the application form, a list of all the questions we will ask you and some guidance on what we are looking for. Our application form contains a total of twenty-five questions. Don't worry, many of these will be fairly quick to answer, but at the same time, we are keen to get to know you, especially as we could be working together for two years! The next two stages after the initial application stage are face-to-face interviews and a selection panel, both in London. We'll provide more information on each stage as you go through the process.
Sponsorship means someone from Catch22 has agreed to support your application. On the application form, you’ll have the option to specify if you have a sponsor or not. If you select ‘Yes’, you’ll be prompted to provide us with their name and email. After you’ve completed the application form, you will then receive a link to a short two-question sponsorship form which you can forward onto your sponsor at Catch22. If you don't have a sponsor, don't worry! You can apply through the same process - just select 'No' on the form. We’ll assess your application, with the exception of the sponsorship section, and if it meets our criteria and is deemed to be strong enough for consideration, we will do our best to find a sponsor for you. We can’t guarantee a sponsor though. Please read the FAQs below for more details on this process.
We should be using our assets and networks for the ‘greater good’. Sometimes that might mean stepping back from the spotlight and into a more supportive role – nurturing or building a platform for others who share our vision but perhaps not our resources.
Chris Wright, CEO of Catch22