We had a great night at The Green for our Social Enterprise #MeetandEat dinner in partnership with Inspiring Adventures last night. Our after-dinner speaker was Eugenie Teasley, founder of youth charity Spark+Mettle.

We were joined by some interesting businesses including MyCognition (read their spotlight here), Poached Creative, WriteLaTeX and more.

It was great to hear from Eugenie. She founded Spark+Mettle to help people flourish. Spark+Mettle is a youth charity that enables less privileged young people to build character strengths, soft skills and networks. They run a six month personal and professional development programme for a handpicked number of 18–24 year olds, as well as developing online tools and leading offline events, workshops and retreats. They have already supported and helped 1000s of children.

She talked about her motivations for starting Spark+Mettle, the need to balance work and family life, the highs of receiving funding and growing her team, the best £1,000 she ever spent (on the original branding!) and the need to adapt as the business developed from an idea and vision to something real and again as it grows and matures. It was an absolute pleasure to dine with Eugenie.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:

 

Thanks to everyone that joined us. It was a good night full of social enterprise chat and tasty pie!

Thanks again to our sponsor Rackspace for their ongoing support!