The Customer Employment Partnership (http://www.cepjobs.org) was set up in 2010 to create paid employment opportunities for people who have used homelessness services and to encourage and support people with ‘lived experience’ to consider the homelessness sector as a viable career option.

It is a scheme involving a number of organisations working with homeless people including Thames Reach, Crisis, The Passage, Broadway, Centre Point, The Connection at St Martin in the Fields, Homeless Link, Providence Row Housing Association and Look Ahead and is being organised by South London YMCA. Their website has a range of available jobs.

These are generally entry-level jobs intended to give people a first step and many are support work jobs.

Breadwinners (http://www.breadwinners.org.uk) was set up to help those at the margins suffering from poverty and unemployment, find a way to work and they set up a delivery service taking artisan bread to people’s homes.. With micro-loans and training, Breadwinners buy loaves from bakeries at cost price and sell on for profit – keeping the difference to reinvest in the next day’s loaves and build their business.

The team see their initiative as  a catalyst to empower people who are unemployed to transform their circumstances by becoming their own boss. At the same time they work to  address the issues surrounding unemployment in disadvantaged communities .