We’re dedicated to a vision where work serves a higher purpose: educating, enabling, and building sustainable community structures. We’ve developed a unique, legal, and low-cost model that leverages UK government funding, peer-to-peer employment, and intentional community living to create genuine opportunities for young people.
This approach is designed for 16-24 year olds who are care leavers or have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, offering a pathway to real qualifications, a living wage (topped up by Universal Credit), and a supportive community environment.
Over 24-year-old, the required 5% employer cost for a Business Administration Level 3 apprenticeship in the UK is typically £250, so still viable.
A peer-to-peer structure within an intentional community. Young people employ each other, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem where work directly benefits the global community and community members.
We operate from a rural campsite community, embracing sustainable living practices like composting, renewable energy, and eventually, permitted development for temporary dwellings (straw bale houses, etc.). This hands-on environment becomes our living university.
British apprentices on low incomes are fully eligible to claim Universal Credit for low incomes. This is a crucial element that can significantly top up their wages, ensuring a viable living arrangement.
Here are reliable business functions an apprentice can do in 3–6 hours per week that align with basic human needs and can be monetized:
- Growing & Selling Microgreens: This is a low-overhead business where small batches can be grown in limited space and sold to local cafés, restaurants, or via a small online shop. The apprentice can manage a few growing cycles per week, handling cultivation, harvesting, and packaging. Margins can be high, making it viable for a few hours of work.
- Monetization: Selling produce directly to local businesses or through an online store platform like Shopify.
- Neighbourhood Composting Service: Collect food scraps and garden waste from local households for a monthly fee, and then sell the finished compost. This addresses waste management and gardening needs.
- Monetization: Charging a monthly subscription fee per household.
- Local Errand & Task Services: Offer reliable, local services to elderly or busy neighbours, such as light gardening, grocery shopping, or dog walking. This addresses basic care and community needs.
- Monetization: Charging hourly rates for various tasks.
- Online Tutoring/Peer Mentoring (Monetized Correctly): Your concern about exploiting them is valid if the tutoring is for your business. Instead, the apprentice can be an employee in your business, which helps you market and run a separate educational platform that generates income.
- Monetization: The apprentice helps create digital products (study guides, templates, video lessons) which you sell online. The business earns revenue from these sales, which in turn pays the apprentice’s wage.
Micro-businesses with fewer than 50 employees:
- You will receive £1,000 as an incentive for taking on the apprentice (fully paid after one year).
- The government covers 100% of the approved training and assessment costs.
- You use this process to take on an apprentice and mentor them within the community.
- The sponsorship process costs are recovered from community errands above.
- The liability is as low as £196.30 per month if the person you are sponsoring (the employee/apprentice) actually does the work they were instructed to do.
- National Insurance Contributions (NICs) Relief: Employers do not have to pay Class 1 NICs for apprentices under the age of 25 on earnings up to a certain threshold, which offers a significant saving.
- Apprentice Bursary: Eligible apprentices (care leavers aged 16-24) may receive a £3,000 bursary paid directly to them via the training provider in instalments, which does not impact the employer’s costs.
- Additional Learning Support (ALS): The training provider can apply for extra government funding (£150 per month, with potential for more through an “earning adjustment statement”) to help cover the costs of any reasonable adjustments or support the apprentice might need due to their EHC plan.
Half of the hours the employee works for are fed back into the structure and community which in this way, with trust is a valid school on its own, but could become viable as a profit making entity from the task provision and services if a suitable ethical business model can be made.