The Millin Charity: Local Women, Local Enterprise

The Millin Charity is a specialist provider of women-only enterprise support services for women who are thinking about starting a business and women led businesses who need support to be better prepared to build a successful and sustainable business.

The Millin Charity will continue to deliver our Local Women Local Enterprise offer from our Gateshead Hub based at the Greenesfield Business Centre. As part of this project, they aim to offer women the opportunity to become:

enterprise ready through a number of programmes they can take part in
provide support to existing enterprises to enable business growth

Achievements over the last year include:

Being able to support over 50 women who have a business idea get closer to business start-up by providing a package of enterprise support to meet their needs and take them through their journey from inception to business start-up.
Supporting women to become financially independent through them becoming self-employed and actively being able to run their businesses.
Being able to work with over 50 existing businesses to identify areas of support, enabling them to work with a dedicated business expert to help them explore areas of growth, be able to put in place relevant marketing strategies to improve their social media presence, look at employing staff and creating new jobs, being able to improve productivity and increase business income.
Women have been able to improve their financial planning, forecasting and able to create the tools they need to be in a better position to run their business.
The project has so far enabled us to reach out to many diverse women in Gateshead, creating an entrepreneurial community of women by provided the bespoke support they needed to get their enterprise journeys off to a good start.

April 25 - March 26 Local Women Local Enterprise will continue to offer the following for women to take part in:

One to one business support including business structures, milestone and goal setting, financial planning, product costing, legalities, business registration, markets, marketing, productivity.
A range of enterprise training courses such as 'Running your own Business' and 'Business Planning'
A range of specialist workshops and expert one-to-one sessions that cover a range of areas including exploring enterprise, using social media, website development; basic bookkeeping; managing budgets; insurance and risk management; using online tools to develop your business and social media.
Trading at markets and developing online trading opportunities; we will support women to take their products and services to market and support them to develop their online profiles.
Networking and inspiring opportunities for women to come together and learn from each other.

If you live in Gateshead and would like to take part, please get in touch and they will carry out an assessment/eligibility and will support you to join the programme.

Contact details

Kirsty McDine and Shewley Haque
0191 499 8402
admin@themillincharity.co.uk
www.themillincharity.co.uk (opens new window)

Case studies

Donna-Lisa Healy Photographer

Donna Lisa joined the Millin Charity in November 2023 to receive support for her photography business as she wanted to grow and develop her business into new areas.

Support received:

financial forecasting
market research
social media development

Donna-Lisa has received one-to-one business advice and guidance and has attended a range of business workshops and has expanded her business and secured further bookings.

Pear & Panda

Emma joined the Millin Charity in October 2023 as she wanted to gain as much knowledge as she could to set up her own small business. She is a mum of two small children and she was inspired to set up her business making healthy snacks for children as she noticed there weren't any options in the shops.