Moray social enterprise that fought child poverty winds up with ‘sad heart'
R-evolution for Good, based in Rothes, was founded by community advocate Debi Weir in March 2020 as a charitable 'community benefit society'.
It came off the back of Mrs Weir's work with Moray School Bank, which was formed to gather clothing to keep pupils warm during winter.
Its goal was to provide training and development to businesses, with 100% of profits directed towards programmes tackling child poverty.
However, due to Covid, Mrs Weir said the Land Street enterprise, which also operated as a charity, was unable to trade.
Instead, it used funding to deliver a counselling service to the community.
'Rather than take the profit and deliver the support services, we got funding and the support services took off – so it kind of worked backwards,' explained Mrs Weir.
'Because of Covid, and because the support services funded were so successful, we ended up focusing on that and not actually on running the business.
'The charity itself was so successful, all of the hours were going into delivering that, and there just wasn't the ability to turn it around.
'It's sad because it did some really positive things – it just wasn't working as a community benefit society. I was also killing myself.'
In a heartfelt message posted on the organisation's website, Ms Weir said the team had closed R-evolution with 'a sad heart'.
'We are very proud of all that it has achieved in the past four years, but it is time to wind up the organisation,' she wrote.
'Thank you to all of the people we have worked with, you have all been part of leaving a long-lasting legacy on Moray.'
Despite the closure, in July, Mrs Weir said R-evolution has a huge amount to be proud of.
'We began delivering our free counselling service in March 2020, and have supported over 150 adults and 50 children, totalling over 2,300 hours of counselling,' she wrote.
'We've also supported 27 counsellors, with 17 having completed their diplomas to become fully qualified counsellors so far.
'Our PDA SQA qualification has seen 11 new children and young people counsellors in the north-east too.
'In our coaching work, also since March 2020, we've supported over 140 adults and 90 children, offering over 2,800 hours of coaching.
'This work includes RADAR delivering coaching with perpetrators of domestic abuse.'
She said the venture had also delivered coaching courses, helping 30 individuals become qualified coaches.
'More recently, we've had great success with our Men's Space programme, which operates to give men access to peer support in Elgin and Lossiemouth, on a weekly basis.'
R-evolution For Good sold shares to help deliver training and development as part of their revenue-generating model.
In 2022, the charity was awarded £177,000 in funding from the European Social Fund for its 'Stepping Forward' project, designed to help parents plan for their children's futures while working with coaches to set achievable life goals.
The project ran in tandem with Moray Council's Money Advice Moray and supported dozens of families during a period of economic strain.
Four people have been made redundant as a result of the closure.
As the dissolution notice in Edinburgh Gazette outlines, any parties with claims or interests in the organisation's funds have three months from April 16 to begin proceedings.
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