It all started with Moray School Bank
It seems like a lifetime ago that the Board of Moray School Bank were all sat round the whiteboard, brainstorming social enterprise ideas we had to ensure the charity could be sustainable.
We had been given some funding to investigate the ideas and we were working with Community Enterprise to put together a strategic plan. We toyed with many different business types such as shops, nurseries and cafe’s. Our ideas were just not creating the desire and motivation we were hoping for and so we turned it on it’s head and started to look at our strengths. We soon began to realise that as a board our strengths were in supporting people. So we spoke to families and asked what support they would need to make change for themselves and they said they wanted help from their point of reference, so that they could move out of being ‘stuck’ in their current situation.
We also looked at markets and what gaps were out there, realising that we had the ability to offer training and development to local businesses that is not generally available locally.
We began to plan a learning and development social enterprise that would invest its profits in supporting families to move out of the cycle of poverty. One of the board members said ‘We are starting a revolution!’ And I wrote it down, realising that it was really prominent as a social movement is really what we wanted to create.
What’s in the name… R-evolution?
We began to look at the word ‘revolution’ and the word ‘evolution’ realising that what we want to achieve is both of those things! When I was researching the meanings and what we could use the word ‘love’ stood out and I then created the name of the organisation which was born as R-evolution. Our logo came from our social movement of empowering people to change based on love and breaking the cycle of poverty!
The Board were really taken with the name and we decided that it was born, and we agreed that our name would be R-evolution, and our strapline was agreed as development for good, hence, R-evolution For Good was born!