A Year of Opportunity

By Paul Brownlee

What does the Skill Mill mean to me? The Skill Mill means a lot to me, it represents opportunity and a journey, and by opportunity I mean it has afforded me the opportunity to do something completely different to what I’ve been doing for the past 23 years. It provides an opportunity to think differently, to act differently and to engage with a whole set of new and interesting people that I would never have had the opportunity to come into contact with. It also represents a gift of an opportunity to the young people that we’re working for and who work for us in terms of the opportunity of employment which is something that I have striven to develop with partners in the past with little success, and now we have the opportunity to take control and to deliver those employment opportunities ourselves.

In terms of a journey, it’s been a really inspirational journey working with the people that we’ve worked with and a journey from not being a social entrepreneur, to being a social entrepreneur, to be a director of a company, to seeing the kernel of an idea, sat in a pub one night over a pint through to making it happen, to signing documents as a director, to employing people, to paying wages and to seeing the benefits of the Skill Mill both in terms of the young people that we employ but for ourselves as directors and other employees of the Skill Mill, sharing ideas and developing ideas and putting them into practice, making them happen. So yeah, so it’s been an opportunity and a fantastic journey.