It’s been just over a year since Karen and her daughter Jessica first tested their idea to help local people struggling with their finances. Their team had taken on the citizen mission of the cost of living on the last programme using the citizen incubator model, and finding a solution for their Colchester community felt personal.
Karen knew what it was like to manage on little money. She used to tell the story of dropping a pound, seeing it roll under a car, and waiting patiently by the window twitching the curtains waiting for that car to move because she knew what that pound meant.
That experience and others like it led her to the simple insight that those who have the least money are often the best budgeters. She thought - what if people like her, who have learnt how to manage on very little money, could support those in her community who now find themselves in a difficult financial position as a result of the cost of living. That insight became Trusted Money Confidence, an innovative peer to peer money confidence programme – the first of its kind in the UK.
In March last year Karen, Jessica and their team put their idea to the test. 10 local people started the first Trusted Money Confidence programme. No-one had ever tried the approach before and they didn’t know if it would work. Six weeks later and they were blown away by the impact - the participants saved thousands on average after only 12 hours of sessions. They were onto something.
After the programme Karen and Jessica set up Trusted Money Confidence as its own community-led business and they haven’t looked back since. In the space of just over a year they have built a social business that has run a further seven programmes across Colchester. In May they hit a major milestone with participants collectively saving over £100,000 on those six week programmes since they started delivering them.
This is a huge achievement for Karen and Jessica which has made a massive difference to families across the city in which they live. Programmes have built friendships between people who were previously isolated, led local residents to gain new employment, and supported participants to continue to make savings.
Most profoundly, their community-led approach to money management has helped local people overcome one of the most powerful limiting forces in their lives. Karen puts it simply, “No more shame”. Participants have gone from being scared to share their situation with anyone, to appearing on national news demanding changes that help tackle the poverty they face.
The way Trusted Money Confidence was invented has also been deeply empowering to Karen and Jessica. By offering a full-time living wage salary and recruiting without asking for a single CV, the citizen incubator model reached deep into communities, putting power in the hands of citizens with direct experience of the social issues they were solving for.
£100,000 saved by those facing hardship in Colchester is a major milestone but it doesn’t surprise me that Karen and Jessica were able to achieve it. Their solution may have been catalysed by the citizen incubator approach. But what has maintained it is the passion and perseverance that comes from solutions being created and led by those with direct experience of social problems themselves.
Karen and Jessica have proven that with entrepreneurial spirit and lived experience citizens can not only invent the right solutions, they can also navigate the significant challenge and ups and down of turning those ideas into social businesses that have impact over the longer-term.
