Change Please
The Big Issue / Change Please
Issue 45 | December 2017
Agency
FCB Inferno London
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors Al Young, Owen Lee Art Director Jack Walker Copywriter Ali Dickinson
Other Credits
Head of Planning Chris Baker
Date
Ongoing
Background
In 2015, Change Please launched a new way of helping the homeless of London. Starting with one coffee cart in Covent Garden, the NGO was soon helping Londoners get their daily fix of caffeine at 15 different locations around the city.
Homeless people were trained as baristas and given a place to rent and a living wage while working on their carts for six months, learning valuable vocational and social skills to help them re-enter society and move on to full time work.
Once they had completed the programme, the employees returned to into the mainstream world of work and all remaining revenues were put back into the project with the figure currently over £655,000.
Idea
Almost two years since the unveiling of its mobile coffee cart, Change Please took another major step as a social enterprise coffee specialist by launching its acclaimed coffee into Sainsbury's stores nationwide. The premium, speciality-graded coffee was made available to over 375 stores from September 2017 with all profits being used to reduce homelessness across the UK.
Results
Change Please has helped 35 formerly homeless people totally transform their lives with a full intervention that included housing support, bank accounts, therapy and full emotional support.
Our Thoughts
It seems likely that the old adage about "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime' has been around since the 12th century writer Maimonides. But it hasn't stopped thousands of charities asking for our money to pay for stop-gap solutions.
Now here's an organisation that has chosen to use commercial savvy to provide practical help. Create a product that meets a need and you can do what you like with the profits, including creating sheltered accommodation for the dispossessed and struggling.
Perhaps helping 35 people back to their feet doesn't sound like much of a success story to some readers, used to results measured in billions of impressions? But as an example to other NGOs looking for ways to raise funds, it is a brilliant 21st century story about teaching a man to fish.