Wigan and Leigh Community Charity (WLCC), formerly known as the Abram Ward Community Charity (AWCC) plays an integral role in the development of the social economy (social enterprises, cooperatives and Community Businesses) in the borough. A key contributor to the community wealth building agenda, we see community ownership and the growth of the social economy sector to be key.

Already through our previous work as Abram Ward Community Cooperative, and our Made in Wigan initiative, we promote the role of the social economy as a key enabler to the future community wealth building success. More and more they want to see local enterprise and businesses thriving as part of the Wigan Borough economy.

Abram Ward Community Co-operative was established in 2013 to create a ‘bottom up’ approach to growing the community, and also Wigan borough. It is based at Platt Bridge Community Zone, from which it completed a community asset transfer in 2014. From there, it provides advice, support and training to the local community to help establish social enterprises and community businesses.

The co-operative has developed a neighbourhood planning forum to allow the community to have their say on both economic development and health and well-being. It has also co-developed the Wigan Borough Social Enterprise Network and works with it to address issues identified by the community. Abram Ward Community Cooperative lead on the successful campaign to designate Wigan Borough as a Social Enterprise Town, via Social Enterprise UK’s kitemark.

The co-operative is one of six organisations across the country that are part of the Power to Change ‘Empowering Places ’programme. Through this, it has created a local wealth building project named ‘Made in Wigan’, which aims to reduce inequality via the growth of community businesses.

‘Made in Wigan’ is a project that aims to work with all anchor institutions and the private sector to ensure there is a ‘line of sight’ of social enterprises and community businesses that will empower local people to spend locally, whilst being trained to showcase their ‘special something’ and turn it into a service that meets the needs of the local community.