Change Please: The Power of Partnership in Social Business
Cemal Ezel discusses what ten years of Change Please has taught us about collaboration, resilience, and real impact.
Ten years ago, the vision for Change Please started with a simple question: Can a cup of coffee change a life? At the time, I never imagined it would become what it is today. Last year alone, we supported over 3,500 people who have experienced homelessness, provided 21,745 hours of barista training, and expanded into eight countries. We have done this all while remaining focused on driving sustainable impact, empowering individuals, and finding innovative ways to address the world’s most pressing challenges.
We start social enterprises and charities because we want to see positive change in the world. At Change Please we help people who have faced huge adversity and struggles, yet they still find the courage to decide, day by day, coffee by coffee, challenge by challenge, to change their life. To not press snooze when the alarm goes off at 5.55am. Their resilience and courage is what keeps me and my team going. However, the reality is that it is tough. The social problems we are trying to solve, homelessness, systemic exclusion and poverty are massive. They are complex, multi-headed beasts that no single organisation, no matter how resilient or passionate, can solve alone.
In the UK alone, there are approximately 131,000 social enterprises, employing 2.3 million people and contributing £78 billion to the economy. If we truly want to move from just supporting people to actually solving the issues, we cannot view other social enterprises as competitors or separate entities. We must view them as catalyst to create real change.
This philosophy is why our partnership with fellow social enterprise, GLL, represents a pivotal shift in how we think about growth in the third sector.
By partnering with GLL, we are unlocking a new model of shared value. We are not only utilising their immense footprint to grow our coffee sales, but they are directly helping us increase the number of people experiencing homelessness we can support. This year, we are thrilled that through our partnership, GLL has funded 4 people through the Change Please barista training programme. Providing our trainees with the training and additional support they need to lift themselves out of homelessness.
Therefore, if we want to increase the number of people we can help, we have to leverage each other's assets. We need to find partners who share our values, whether this is simply through buying Change Please coffee or partnering through hosting workshops, mentoring, employing our trainees, or developing joint products.
There really is true power in partnership and we can’t wait to see what the next 10 years holds.