How Zink benefitted from Derbyshire Accelerator video transcript

[Music]

[Paul Bohan speaking:]

I'm Paul Bohan, I'm the CEO of Zink based in Buxton. We're a charity that supports people who are  

experiencing issues like poverty, unemployment, perhaps chaotic housing or homelessness, or  

isolation — but really, for anybody in the community who just needs somewhere to go...or get a bit of  

support.

So the Net Zero Accelerator first put us in touch with the Investors in the Environment. So we've joined that scheme and actually, one of our trustees has taken it up and is transforming the way that we deal with waste, and use electricity. We also were provided with grants and that paid for solar panels, and those solar panels are powering the cooker in our community Eco Café, so essentially the food is being cooked by the sun!

So I heard about the East Midlands Accelerator when I attended a webinar about funding that was available to

businesses and charities in the area. The impact has been that...we always wanted to be an eco-friendly organisation and this has really speeded that up, and the fact we've now got solar panels that provide most of our electricity during the summer: it's fantastic. And by enabling us to join the Investors in the Environment, we've been able to take further steps, and calculated steps, so we're able to measure how well we're doing.

We do plan for further expansion of our services. We are fairly new in our our current premises and have expanded rapidly in the last couple of years, and we intend to keep up that momentum. And the University of Derby are supporting us with an intern later in the year, so we're looking forward to that.

I don't think you've got anything to lose by getting in touch and finding out what's available. Often I found

that grants are sometimes a bit hidden, so...and also businesses don't generally have the time to go out and and seek them, whereas somewhere like the Chamber of Commerce or the University are aware of what's available, and what other support is available as well.

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