Impact

"Wherever Common Purpose operates, you will find leaders doing unusual things; taking responsibility for problems other than their own - at work and in their community - connecting efforts, recognising consequences, asking difficult questions and gathering disparate teams. These leaders are able to build sufficient trust so that people actually change things. There will be many leaders who face up to the complex, messy, long-term problems that really matter; the unusual part is when they become almost limitless as leaders - when they have recognised the need to operate beyond their own space and started to learn how to actually do it, working with others so their efforts combine more often, and add more.

Locally and internationally, Common Purpose graduates will be 'lighting small fires' to create change in their organisations and communities, which are both deeply interconnected and frustratingly fragmented. The Common Purpose effect is best illustrated by the many stories of small changes brought about by leaders, who themselves have changed. It is this individual shift, combined with its local nature and now its sheer scale, that makes it so exciting and sustaining."

Julia Middleton, founder and Chief Executive of Common Purpose

Inspiring innovative partnerships to tackle youth homelessness

Estelle Rowe is the Regional Director of the Engineering Development Trust.

In 1997, she took part in Matrix Birmingham. At the time of the programme, Estelle was working for Young Enterprise and the information, insights and perspectives about housing and the homeless that she gained from the speakers and the other participants on the programme inspired her to collaborate with another participant who worked for St. Basils, a charity that focuses on young homeless people. Together, they created a Young Enterprise programme specifically aimed at the young homeless. This new programme provided young people, who were originally isolated from their peer group and disengaged from the education system, with a chance to explore opportunities and their own potential within a business context.

As a result of new insights gained on Common Purpose...

Eoin MacCuiric, Assistant Principal, Central Statistics Office, Cork (Graduate of Cork Focus 2010)

"The realisation that we need to do more 'joined up' thinking, to look outwards rather than inwards, to see the wider context.   Within my own roles the programme has given me new connections and enables me to make better contributions - in my job and in my community"

Nick Venning, Marketing Director - Global Industries at PricewaterhouseCoopers (Graduate of Matrix Birmingham 1992), discovered new perspectives:

"In business today, even if we don't necessarily always agree with colleagues or clients, it is vitally important to be able to stand in others' shoes and look at issues and problems from more than one perspective. Common Purpose teaches you how to do this with very real examples!"

Katy Best, Business Development Director at Belfast City Airport (Graduate of Profile Belfast 2008), gained:

"An insight into what the airport needs to consider from a business point of view and the many assets in the local community."

Sharing the benefits of a new network

Cecilia McCloskey is the Principal of St. Gemma's Girls School in Belfast

In 1998, she took part in Matrix and says that the new and diverse Common Purpose network gave her: "An understanding of the difficulties that other organisations faced. At the time, Northern Ireland had a very fractured society but the experiences on the programme created, among a very diverse group of people, a level of trust and common understanding that has made it easy to pick up the phone and maintain the links that were developed ever since". This network has been invaluable to Cecilia's school. She has been able to bring business managers into the school to help the students with interview skills and career choices.