MEECOE has arrived…
Funded by Advantage West Midlands, the Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre of Expertise is an exciting two-year project that will promote a strategic and innovative approach to supporting ethnic minority businesses in the West Midlands. A consortium led by De Montfort University’s Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) will work with public and private sector stakeholders to enhance policy and practice for ethnic minority enterprise in the region. MEECOE will work closely with AWM’s other Centres for Expertise to develop an integrated approach to diversity and enterprise activity.
MEECOE’s role
MEECOE will deliver a coherent set of activities that relate to four core areas: market intelligence; stakeholder engagement; policy and scrutiny; and piloting.
Market intelligence. MEECOE will develop an authoritative assessment of ethnic minority enterprise in the region, and work with relevant stakeholders to communicate the implications of this analysis for policy and practice. MEECOE will focus upon the use of appropriate knowledge rather than just data generation.
Stakeholder Engagement. A key objective for MEECOE is to promote change amongst agencies and organisations that interact with ethnic minority businesses. An engagement strategy will be devised to facilitate change, and establish valued added relationships that will have lasting impact beyond the lifetime of the project. In addition to agencies that operate within public sector business support system, MEECOE will develop links with the corporate sector, private sector intermediaries, HEIs and policy actors operating at a national level.
Policy and Scrutiny. MEECOE will act as a critical friend to Business Link West Midlands and provide support and input into the development of enterprise policy within Advantage West Midlands and other key stakeholders, working together through an evidence-based approach to continually improve the effectiveness of interventions for ethnic minority businesses.
Piloting. MEECOE will be active in developing new approaches to ethnic minority enterprise development. It will respond innovatively to opportunities for experimentation.
MEECOE’s activities
An exciting programme of activities is planned to promote innovation and knowledge transfer in the field of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. This includes:
• Best practice seminars of effective community engagement and enterprise support for ethnic minority businesses
• A cross-cutting initiative involving specialist providers working with different strands of diversity
• Information exchange with financial intermediaries, including the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and Barclays Bank
• An initiative to map and promote new migrant business activity in the region.
MEECOE’s partners
As a matter of strategic intent, MEECOE will collaborate with stakeholders from a wide variety of domains with the aim of ensuring that ethnic minority enterprise becomes everyone’s business. Accordingly, MEECOE will work closely with corporations, financial intermediaries and professional bodies; this will add value to existing and new links with regional partnerships, local networks, consortia, voluntary and community groups. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Barclays Bank, the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS), the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Supplier Diversity Europe (SDE) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have agreed to play an active role in the work of MEECOE.
The MEECOE team
Professor Monder Ram (CREME, De Montfort University) leads a core team comprising Dr. Kiran Trehan (Lancaster University) and Chris Khamis (CSK Strategies Ltd). Liz Frost (CREME) administers the project.
The core team is supported highly experienced team of experts: Kiki Maurey (KMC Ltd), Professor Paul Edwards (University of Warwick), Professor Trevor Jones (CREME) and Professor David McEvoy (Bradford University).
Contact
Liz Frost
Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre of Expertise
c/o CREME at De Montfort University
Tel: 0116 250 6428
Email: efrost@dmu.ac.uk
