Common Purpose Blog

On the fourth night of the ‘troubles’ three young men were murdered in Birmingham, UK. The country waited in worry and anticipation for reprisal attacks on subsequent nights. It was left to the grief stricken father of one of the boys, Tariq Jahan, to provide some of clarity, wisdom and reason. In his voice, full [...]

There are many different incentives to try and get people and businesses to become more ‘green’, and in particular to reduce their carbon emissions. Do they work? Are carbon emissions dropping? And if they are, by enough to hit some of the targets that are thought to be necessary for the future safeguarding of resources [...]

It is raining. Not cold, but raining. Not a good day to lay and sit on the ground in the city centre of Hamburg, just beneath one of Hamburg’s tourist attractions: the river (but lake-like) Alster. Three Your Turn graduates do it anyway. Wrapped up in sleeping bags, with woollen hats on. This was Saturday, [...]

I spoke at the start of a Frontrunner (our course for university students) specifically for disabled students, which we run in association with Santander. They were a hugely focused and dynamic group who were determined to work across disability and other organisations as leaders rather than stick to networks for people with their specific disability. [...]

I met a 22 year old in Edinburgh recently who has just finished her nursing qualifications, she is eager to get going with her career, make her contribution to society and use her knowledge and skills but there are so few jobs coming up that the competition is fierce – it’s no better if she [...]

Nearly 1m young people out of work in the UK is a shocking statistic. There are many schemes to help them find employment which is crucial, but an important area that’s often missed is that few exist to offer the training and development opportunities these young people would have received if they had a job. [...]

No-one can ever hope to know more than a small percentage of what is going on around them.  The better informed you are about what really matters, the more you will be able to give the most appropriate leadership and communicate fully to the widest possible audience. Increasingly leaders are invisible to followers in a [...]

Dishaa (our Venture which connected leaders in the UK and India) was so successful, unbelievably successful, that we have been asked to launch similar Ventures between lots of countries around the world (see www.commonpurpose.org/ventures). Dishaa means direction in Hindi, so we will have Phambili (direction in the Nguni languages inc. Xhosa and Zulu), Dao Xiang [...]

The last two days I had the pleasure of attending the Third Sector Digital Communications and Social Media Convention. Throughout the conference it occurred to me the themes that kept creeping up around the social media were the very same themes that arise when considering what it means to be a good leader. Here were [...]

I just came across what looks like a fab new initiative via Twitter, run by PwC with chef Simon Boyle and his Beyond Food Foundation, De Vere Venues and the School for Social Entrepreneurs. The three-way partnership between the private, public and third sectors will help disadvantaged individuals develop skills and find work through a [...]