Hip Hip Hooray Social Enterprise

Jenny Adjene and her husband Emiko founded Hip Hip Hooray in 2014, supplying a range of stylish and original stationery for weddings, parties and celebrations. Jenny taught herself graphic design and created all the original artwork herself, quickly finding that there was a market for interesting designs which could be customised online at accessible prices. The business was set up to fit around her family’s requirements, and the model was very successful for a number of years until the start of the pandemic. Celebrations and events disappeared overnight, with no certainty of when they would return, and the business ground to a halt. Jenny has been employing people for the last eight years and was relieved when she was able to retain all her staff through the furlough scheme. The forced break gave her time to think about how she could move the business forward and she came to the conclusion that she had reached a plateau where she was going through the motions rather than pursuing a goal.

Jenny had previously worked with the youth offending service and volunteered with a drug rehabilitation centre, so she had a good understanding of the difficulties people faced when trying to get their lives back on track. She realised that the pandemic presented an ideal time to repurpose the business to create a social enterprise, providing training and employment for women in recovery from addiction, or domestic abuse, or who have experience of the criminal justice system. She recognised that there are many hands-on work opportunities for men, but it can be a much more daunting prospect for women to find a job, especially as they often have responsibility for finding childcare. She took advice from a consultant about setting up a social enterprise and contacted two charities: Trevi, an award-winning South West women’s and children’s charity, which supports women moving on from addiction and abuse, as well as Pause, which helps women break the cycle of having children removed from their care. Jenny and her husband then developed a 12-month programme to help women get back into the workplace and support them in learning practical skills such as packing products, answering the phone, customer service, printing, IT and admin skills. They created two placements, and Trevi and Pause helped them find two candidates, ready for a chance to re-enter the workplace.

The placements have gone well – in fact so well that the trainees have become an integral part of the team and Jenny intends to keep them on at the end of the 12 months. The Hip Hip Hooray team works very closely together and there has been a holistic approach to the placements with everyone learning together, helping to build self-confidence and life skills, including simple activities such as making and sharing a wholesome soup every day for lunch. In addition, the trainees benefit from regular training days and mentoring, covering a wide variety of topics such as inclusivity, conflict resolution, communication, trauma and money management. In 2021 Hip Hip Hooray took on an illustrator and this has enabled a new approach to designing stationery collections, involving everyone in discussing design ideas, and creating mood boards. Empowering and uplifting women is very much at the heart of the whole process and one of the recent exciting design concepts has been ‘wild women’ with strong, bold body shapes.

Having completed the first set of placements, Jenny decided to revise the approach and established a charity called Gifted Women with a board of trustees who each bring specialist skills and experience. Starting in 2022, the charity will organise six months of training for those enrolled on the scheme, using Jenny’s team and other experts to deliver sessions; this will be followed by work experience placements in local businesses, including Hip Hip Hooray, which will then offer paid employment to some of the women on graduation from the programme. The team at Hip Hip Hooray has proved the scheme works and it is possible to empower women to make a new start, making a real difference to their lives.

By Rosemary Best

For more information visit www.giftedwomen.co.uk or Facebook: GiftedWomenUK. If you would like to offer sponsorship, funding, training sessions or become a business employer partner please contact info@giftedwomen.co.uk or 01822 615614.

If you would like to purchase Hip Hip Hooray products visit www.hiphiphooray.com or the shop at 3D Barley Market Street, Tavistock.

The Gifted Women programme

6 months of intensive group work employability coaching, building self-esteem, aspirations and equipping women for the workplace.

Weekly work experience placements in local businesses, enabling women to put their learning into practice, gain invaluable experience and be part of a team.

12 months of 1:1 mentoring personalised according to each woman’s individual gifts and goals.

Support in securing employment or further education upon graduating the Gifted Women programme.