Director

Ian is a UK based social entrepreneur and charity director, working primarily on issues including international development and trade, youth enterprise and community engagement. Ian has worked in community development for over 25 years. After a career in social housing, Ian moved to Africa where he spent several years working with marginalised rural communities on developing sustainable livelihoods programmes. This is where he first gained experience in social enterprise, helping to set up and support community enterprises that tapped into the growing eco-tourism African crafts markets. Since returning to the UK in 2006, Ian has worked exclusively in and with social enterprises. In 2007 he set up Digital Outreach Ltd, now one of the UK’s leading community outreach and engagement organisations, that has delivered community engagement campaigns on the Digital TV Switchover, fraud prevention, cancer awareness, digital inclusion and fuel poverty.
Ian is co-director of the Lorna Young Foundation, a development charity that provides business and market education to smallholder farmer co-operatives in developing countries. In 2008 Ian worked with Ethiopian refugees in the UK to create the Oromo Coffee Company (OCC), the World’s first community-owned, non-profit, direct trade coffee enterprise. Following the success of the OCC, Ian and the LYF went on to create the UK’s first fair trade youth and community enterprise programme, which has now evolved into the flagship social enterprise Not Just a Trading Company CIC.

http://www.lyf.org.uk; http://www.notjustawebsite.org.uk; http://www.digitaloutreach.org.uk; http://www.oromocoffee.org