BUSINESS BIO

Where is the enterprise based? Yorkshire currently, but delivers across the UK

Key business markets: Employment, capacity building programmes, accredited training and equality and diversity services

Annual turnover: £300,000

% income from trading (as opposed to grants): 100%

Number of staff: 7 full-time, 5 part-time

www.trescomresearch.co.uk

ambassadors

Saeeda Ahmed

Saeeda Ahmed
  • Trescom

  • 32

  • Co-founder / head of diversity

  • Bradford

Social Enterprise Ambassador Saeeda Ahmed is in the business of tackling the labour market and social exclusion in dynamic and innovative ways

Eight years ago, Saeeda Ahmed – a trained accountant who doesn’t like figures – found herself working as a social enterprise research manager in the public sector. The project strived to train “hard to reach communities” in research skills. But Saeeda felt frustrated as the project was “not enterprising enough”. So she set up Trescom with two colleagues.

Trescom helps marginalised groups access employment through training and holistic support, and works with large organisations to improve the way they deliver services.

Its mission is to help make positive change for communities in how services are delivered whilst enabling local people to be a key part of this process, so they “own” that success. 

Trescom recognises that the barriers or issues do not just lie with communities but also with the organisations that are supposed to be working with them. It challenges the way mainstream organisations have operated in a “one size fits nobody approach” and helps them to embed inclusive values within their organisations.

This approach has proved highly successful. In one case, Trescom worked with more than 40 training providers nationally on how to be more inclusive in terms of gender, ethnicity, disability, age and social background and delivered groundbreaking techniques to make this happen.

Trescom has to date undertaken more than 70 contracts, overachieving significantly on some of its targets. Clients have included Jobcentre Plus, Learning and Skills Council West Yorkshire, several private businesses, Bradford ’s ‘B-Equal’ equality employment project and the NHS. 

The enterprise has recently been awarded two prestigious employability and vocational skills contracts: Skills for Jobs (Bradford based) and Skilled for Success (Leeds City Council).

Contracts are often awarded to the same types of organisations that do not care about the individuals they are working with nor whether the provision they offer is actually making a difference to those people. We can do more than what they do for the same price or less and give added-value.

“Money alone doesn’t motivate me,” says Saeeda.  “I have been offered financial opportunities where I could be earning significant amounts but as a person I need to know I am making change, not just for myself but for people and areas.

“I tried working in a not-for-profit organisation but the approach was not enterprising enough for me nor did the senior management know enough about the intricacies of working within the community. Too often services were delivered at communities rather than with communities. The knock-on effect of these impersonalised programmes is the impact for those communities is neither owned by the community nor sustainable.”

Saeeda adds: “Contracts are often awarded to the same types of organisations that do not care about the individuals they are working with nor whether the provision they offer is actually making a difference to those people. We can do more than what they do for the same price or less and give added-value.”

One woman has been amazed at the “transformation” her life has undergone with Trescom’s help. “I was low until I took a course called Amaze Yourself run by Bradford University, with Saeeda as my mentor. I wanted to set up my own events company, so Saeeda worked with me and gave me some part-time work at the Trescom offices.

"I gradually got my confidence back and started to get event management jobs and set up my own events company. Trescom was great in letting me work around my own company’s jobs and now I’m fully self-employed and doing well. What they do is so important and Saeeda has been fantastic.”

Quick Facts

  • Trescom supported 660 people to be more active in their community last year. Since February this year, it has trained more than 500 people in skills and employment provision, many of whom face multiple barriers to employment. Many have earned their first ever qualification through Trescom.
  • In 2002 – its second year of existence – Trescom was a finalist for two categories in the ‘Women & Equality Unit and DTI Castle Award’.
  • Trescom offers accredited and non-accredited training to individuals who want to learn about social enterprise, with a view to starting up their own social business.

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