Egg Engage Grow go

What is EGG?

EGG - Engage Grow Go – is a fresh approach to the challenges homeless people face in trying to find full-time employment. By treating each person as an individual and giving them intensive support planning and outcome-based assistance, we aim to provide secure routes to permanent residency and the workplace. 

EGG operates under the Registered Charity Number 1196731.

EGG is about innovation born out of more than two decades of experience of working with the homeless but it’s also about building lasting relationships with people. This isn’t a short-term fix, we’re focused on doing things differently by providing opportunities and experiences that motivate and inspire on a long-term basis.

As the name suggests, we’re seeking to Engage with our clients, Grow their skills and their opportunities and Go on that journey hand in hand with them. But it’s more than just words, this is a targeted concept to enable those people who’ve previously been homeless to develop and thrive. At the heart of EGG is a programme of intensive support work that strives for excellence and every step of that programme must be achieved and learnt by our clients. Whilst EGG clients are offered unrivalled support and guidance, ultimately it will be down to them to take full ownership and direction of their path to independence.

Who is EGG?

EGG has been developed and created by the former CEO of Wellspring in Stockport and Salford’s Loaves and Fishes, Jonathan Billings. For more than 20 years, Jon has been working with, supporting and leading organisations that have been tackling the significant obstacles that homelessness can bring.

He is joined by three highly respected Stockport-based Trustees, Steve Oliver, the CEO of musicMagpie, Simon Rothwell , the CEO of Simon Charles Auctioneers and Rachel Coxon, the Chief People Officer of musicMagpie. All three Trustees share a deep-rooted passion in supporting Jon to make a lasting and positive difference to the lives of homeless people.  

What will EGG look to achieve?

Unfortunately, EGG isn’t for everyone. What we’re aiming to do is seek out clients who have a high potential of becoming independent from our support, having received a helping hand from EGG along the way.

We want to positively engage with as many people as we possibly can and will provide basic support work, advice and signposting to anyone and everyone who is in need. But ultimately, we’ll be focusing our services on a relatively small percentage of homeless people who meet EGG’s assessment criteria.

After years of working with homeless people, we’re setting out to do things differently. We envisage, initially, that no more than 2-3 clients at a time will be signed up to EGG’s services with realistic, achievable goals set for each individual. It’s also crucial that our clients have a high level of engagement and are open and honest about their situation and circumstances. Once introduced, all our clients will undergo an expert assessment process.

Plenty of organisations provide mainstream support, something EGG will supplement rather than replicate.

We’re looking to create partnerships with employers and training providers who can offer opportunities to homeless people whilst also building relationships with accommodation providers. As EGG will only work with a maximum of 3 clients per worker, it will be able to provide intensive support and guidance. Ultimately EGG is designed to give a high level of independence to each client providing them with the skills, confidence, and opportunities to thrive in the future. 

How will EGG achieve its aims?

EGG will have a working agreement in place with each client showing them what’s on offer and what potentially can be achieved.

EGG workers

Our dedicated EGG workers will deliver at least 8 hours of support per week to each client. They will work with clients to form a bespoke person-centred support plan, which is unique to each and every EGG client. The EGG Support Plan will be realistic and achievable, it will also be inspiring and engaging.

 EGG volunteers - mentoring programme

In addition to each client being assigned an EGG worker, EGG runs a volunteering programme involving senior and responsible figures from the community, who’re asked to mentor and support one EGG client each. Volunteers will be heavily involved in providing motivation and support and fully committed to meeting the goals outlined within the EGG client’s support plan.

Each EGG volunteer will provide a minimum of 1-2 hours of voluntary work per month and we envisage that our volunteers will be successful and senior people from a mix of business and community-based backgrounds, who have appropriate mentoring skills. They could be business owners, people of standing in the community, those who have achieved positive goals or even been homeless previously themselves. Each volunteer will be carefully selected, vetted, and matched to the most appropriate EGG client.

Street Outreach

EGG workers will operate together with other organisations to provide street ‘outreach services’ to homeless people. We’re striving to constantly develop relationships with all homeless people to enable us to identify future EGG clients. While we’re not focused on providing practical items such as bedding or clothing, we will work alongside and signpost / share information to other organisations who provide such things alongside other services.

Social Media 

EGG will have a structured Social Media policy dedicated to raising awareness of homelessness and rough sleeping. By using a real-life content and images we aim to address the inadequacies in homelessness provision.

Funding / Awareness 

We’ve already launched a donations platform on this website allowing anyone to financially support EGG services and all donations will be welcomed to help us with our work.

Corporate support will be crucial to EGG, and it’s our hope that companies who support EGG with finance and fundraising will also potentially offer employment opportunities to clients who have completed the EGG programme.

EGG will run awareness / fundraising campaigns. Raising money is important but so too is raising awareness that solutions exist for each and every homeless person. We firmly believe that the answers lie in providing the right opportunities and goals for EGG clients to Engage, Grow and Go…….

Join and Support EGG

We are actively seeking individuals and businesses to join us and help make a lasting and far-reaching impact by supporting EGG. Together we can make EGG a success and achieve outstanding long-term results with homeless people.

We are looking for support with marketing and branding, web design and social media, film making and photography. There are also mentoring and volunteering opportunities and so much more.

If you’re looking for your business to adopt EGG as one of your chosen charities or if you feel you can help in any way, then please get in touch any time. 

Jonathan@Egg.Charity 

Mobile 07866 985242