Rise

Rise is a non-profit social enterprise that was established in 2013, by initial founders Sandra Gordon and Lynn Mareno who recognised the lack of visibility of black businesses on the high street. We specialise in providing opportunities for those businesses to promote what they do to a wider audience through organised events, exhibitions and our weekly radio program on the multi award winning radio station Ujima 98fm.

RISE ‘Recognising Individuals Success and Efforts’

Inspiration came from the poem ‘I Rise’ Maya Angelou & one of Marcus Garvey’s speeches where he stated ‘Up you mighty people’

The vision is to:

• Create and showcase a platform for Business entrepreneurs from within the BME community
• Support and facilitate personal development and self-realisation
• Address social and economic inequalities within the BME community
• Act as a catalyst towards the integration of the BME community into the broader social and economics’ of Bristol.
• To provide facilities for continuous learning in business & creativity

We wanted to create a common purpose of achieving goals through personal and professional aspirations.

One of the ways is to facilitate recognition of the role models within our community and therefore creating aspirational beliefs, this is achieved through our annual awards event.

During 2014 we were lucky enough to be awarded lottery funding to deliver business and personal development workshops to a number of women who have used the skills learnt to continue expanding their businesses and personal lives.

In 2015, we join the award winning community radio station Ujima 98fm with our own weekly radio program which provides a platform for entrepreneurs and businesses to promote themselves, as well as facilitating debate and conversation of key issues within the Community.