Starbucks University of Birmingham

For everyone living with complex disabilities. For everyone who is deafblind. Sense is here to help people communicate and experience the world. Our TouchBase Pears centre, in Selly Oak, is a pioneering, multi-purpose project for the whole community in Birmingham and beyond – a place that brings people together in a welcoming environment where everyone can feel connected, included and part of the community. It has: Developed by Sense, TouchBase Pears also offers a range of arts, sports and wellbeing activities for children and adults who are deafblind, have sensory impairments or complex needs. TouchBase Pears operates as a social enterprise, with a focus on sustainability and creating value for the whole community.

Send a Cow provide seeds, tools, livestock and agricultural training, alongside community development workshops in gender equality, conflict-resolution and farm business skills. Through our unique principle of 'passing on the gift' families we support commit to 'pass on' their training, seeds, and the first female offspring of their livestock to another family in need. In this way the original 'gift' strengthens entire communities as project benefits ripple out and spread our impact far wider than those we directly work with. “When we first start working with families, we don’t ask what they need. We ask them what they have already got.” Aklilu Dogosso, Send a Cow Ethiopia Send a Cow doesn't offer a quick fix solution to poverty and rural development - typically working with communities for three to five years to offer a hand-up rather than a hand-out and effect substantial and sustainable change. Within a few months malnourished families are eating regularly and are able to pay for children to attend school. Within a year families are diversifying their income streams to ensure they can survive when food is scarce and when unexpected disasters strike such as drought. Once graduated from Send a Cow families are economically stable with savings to invest and expand their farming businesses. Despite having helped over one million of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people out of poverty, there’s still more work to do. 220 million people in Africa go hungry every day, with nearly half living on less than 80p a day. It costs £650 to send a cow to a family in Africa. A cow is enough to provide a family with over 3,000 litres of milk a year. This milk gives nutrition to the whole family and brings a steady source of income every year from the scale of the surplus. In addition, using the cow’s manure on the land makes a huge difference to crop yields.