Today I had the chance to meet with the Labour Minister for Poland Anna Kalata, she has a very large task in front of her; tackling the unemployment and re-skilling of the Polish Labour Market. We have spent the last 12 months developing networks and relationships in Poland so that we can develop our concept of Improving Peoples Lives in Poland. Official unemployment figures have been coming down for the last few months, but the number of people in work is not increasing. This means that there is a big impact in the number of Polish people leaving their home to seek work in the UK and Irela..View Complete Post

I read once that we are the “sum total of everybody we have ever met”. I have thought about this a lot and started to realise many years ago that I had been very lucky to meet some amazing people who have left me with a gift of their knowledge, values and experiences. Frank Blamey is someone who has made a big impact on me in my life. He is a wonderful guy who at 75 can still wrestle me to the ground during a debate. He is an angel on earth who is kind, caring, interesting and never makes a judgement. I met him during some voluntary work and we shared a passion for chocolate. Si..View Complete Post

This week I had an opportunity to give an interview to the Jerusalem Telegraphic Agency whilst on a train coming back from London. Anybody who has tried this will first of all know that you can’t do this whilst in the “Quiet Coach”, but actually you can’t do it anyway as the signal drops every few minutes. Eventually we gave up and instead I conducted the interview whilst in a taxi dashing to get to my son’s school.

The reporter was very interested to understand how we help people in Poverty and we had a really good debate about how this can be done..View Complete Post

On Wednesday I had the chance to visit the House of Lords. I was invited to take part in an event hosted by the British Polish Chamber of Commerce to promote Poland in the UK. There were many people there and it was amazing to be inside a building that you see on TV so much. There were business people there trying to understand what market opportunities may exist for them in Poland and how they can go about entering Poland.

There were also some Polish representatives including the Mayor of Katowice, Piotr Uszok, who I met earlier this year in Poland. He is very proud of his city an..View Complete Post

Last week (30th November 2006) I had the chance to visit Stockholm to review the opportunities to spread the work of A4e into Sweden. After the recent national elections there has been a shift in government policy towards seeking to bring new innovative ideas to tackle the high levels of unemployment. Although at 5% unemployment does not seem high compared to some of the other countries we are working in (Israel and Germany are hovering around 10%) it is much higher than Sweden has experienced over the last decade. There is also an issue that the level of unemployment has proven to be stubb..View Complete Post

My name is Roy Newey and I'm delighted to welcome you to my inaugural A4e blog.

I am really happy to have the opportunity to develop the A4e business internationally. I am very excited about the opportunity to establish A4e in many new countries because our mission is to 'improve people's lives'.

We have recently added to our first international delivery contract in Israel, by winning new business in France and Germany. Using our welfare to work expertise, we are helping hundreds of local people gain new skills and return to employment.

I am currently work..View Complete Post