Q8 - What examples of good news stories exist - have businesses and employers ever made a success of this?

The following case studies outline the situations all kinds of different people who have found employment or made great progress in that direction recently:

John Charles (Manager of Catering2order.com)

My name is John Charles and I manage catering2order.com. We are the in-house catering providers for Action for Blind People, supplying staff meals, as well as hospitality and buffet catering for the organisation. Our buffet and hospitality catering services are being extended to an external market, too.

We are now a few months into the project, and I have undertaken several training courses, to give me a better understanding of commercial food hygiene practises, food hazard analysis and management skills.

Catering2order.com now has seven employees, offers a wider range of customer focused services, all the team are undergoing skills training, and we are working towards offering a better range of food, made with quality ingredients, for action staff. There is a lot of positive feeling about these changes within the organisation. We also have our first external, three month contract, with a large charity, so things are really moving forward.

Visage has been a huge but valuable learning curve for us all; Action for Blind People, the Visage managers and the Visage team members. What we have all focussed on throughout is the fact that Action for Blind People and the Visage project are opening up a lot of doors that would otherwise be closed to visually impaired people.

Liz Cooke (Manager of IRIS Digital Archiving)

My name is Liz Cooke and I am the manager of Iris Digital Archiving, Which provides a service to transfer all types of paper documents onto CD ROM.

I was working at RNIB and heard about Visage through my contacts there. The main opportunity, as I saw it, was the chance to start up a business from scratch and to be given a substantial amount of support from the Visage project to do this. The advanced IT training was also of interest to me. These advantages outweighed the offer of another job which would have given me a permanent contract, which I was offered at the same time.

The selection process, to see if we could go through to interview, tested us for initiative, leadership skills, creativity and resourcefulness. I did my background research and I secured a position as team member and was later upgraded to team leader.

Iris digital archiving now has a manager and three team members, who are all fully trained in the highly complex, technical side of the business. We are marketing our services to solicitors, accountants, charities and small to medium sized businesses, through mail shots and by telephone. In addition to these activities, we will also be trying to get articles into local papers, to promote our work.

Through being involved in Visage, I have had the opportunity to take on a management role and the responsibilities that go with it, and have learned marketing and sales techniques. I have also received much valuable support and guidance in putting together our business plan and in developing our marketing strategy.

The team are very happy that the issues surrounding our access technology have now been resolved, as this will enable all of the team, who have varying levels of sight, to access all of the equipment, allowing productivity to go ahead at top speed.

It has been a great test of patients, ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity to arrive at the point where we are at now; where we have a fully functioning business, with state of the art equipment, which we are ready to market. In the future, I hope to go on to run Iris Digital Archiving as an independent, profitable business, which can be a training and development ground for visually impaired people, which is what Visage is all about.

Rob Mackenzie (Manager of RL Mackenzie)

My name is Rob Mackenzie and I'm the manager of RL Mackenzie, a procurement agency, specialising in providing office supplies and printing services.

I originally got in touch with Action for Blind People to find out more about what is available for blind and partially sighted people, then undertook IT and job preparation training and then found out about Visage.

I have always been interested in running a business and in managing a team, and Visage seemed like a great opportunity to pursue these goals and develop new skills at the same time.

The project so far has been very rewarding, in terms of the business related skills I have learned, the sales and marketing training I have received, and the independence and enhanced self esteem it has given me.

RL Mackenzie is currently developing its marketing strategy. We have already begun to sell internally to Action - a huge organisation in itself - and will have external clients as well in the near future.

I am concerned about my working future when the project ends, in terms of whether I will be able to continue with the company, or whether I will have to start something new. So for this reason, and for the sake of the rest of my team, I am determined to use the help and support provided by the Visage project to the full, to establish RL Mackenzie as a successful business.

Ashley Pearce(Manager of Pearce Distribution Services)

I worked in the factory at Action for Blind People for ten years, where my post was local authority funded. That funding came to an end in December 05, at which time the visage project was just being launched. It was perfect timing for me!

I needed another job and there are limited job opportunities for visually impaired people, so it seemed like the next step for me - I had already progressed to a supervisory position within the factory. The recruitment process involved a standard interview, plus the opportunity to put forward a business case and consider the pros and cons of it.

When I got the job as the business manager, there were still two business ideas on the table, so to speak. Following extensive market research, the pick, pack and dispatch company was decided upon, because the overheads and set-up costs were lower and because it would be easier to market than the other option.

Even at this early stage of the project, I was already beginning to learn a huge range of business skills; ICT, marketing, public relations, budget control, market research, finance - and the learning hasn't stopped!

Seven months into the 19th month project, we now have three team members, we have had twelve leads to date from a National mail shot, the business has been featured in Logistics Management magazine, we have attended fashion exhibitions for face-to-face marketing, visited a social enterprise company, (a route we would like to take, as it would give us a unique selling point), and have started our first contract.

The only down side has been that things never happen quite as quickly as you want them to, but the project to date has been very successful and rewarding, and now that we have our first contract, things can only get better!