Pontypridd Town Council have invested funds into Pontypridd-based charity Purple Shoots.

Purple Shoots tackles poverty, disadvantage, unemployment and social isolation through encouraging entrepreneurship and independence. One of the things it does to achieve this is “microfinance” – offering small, ethical loans to aspiring business owners to enable them to start or run a small business. That sounds like any other lender – but the difference is that Purple Shoots will look at lending to people who have been rejected by everyone else. 96% of their customers were on benefits at the time they had their loan.

Since it started 8 years ago, the charity has enabled over 500 new businesses to start across South Wales and supported another 150 existing ones, enabling around 700 people to move out of unemployment.

Purple Shoots founder, Karen Davies, says “We want to see everyone with access to fair and affordable finance so that those who have been left behind by or excluded from the economy can have an opportunity to build their own financial resilience and create long-term, sustainable change for themselves.”

Pontypridd Town Council want to ensure that this opportunity is available to people in Pontypridd into the future and have invested their funds for Purple Shoots to lend to new businesses in their area.

Cllr Simon Pritchard, Leader of the Town Council, said “We are pleased to partner with Purple Shoots to give entrepreneurs in Pontypridd the opportunity to start their own business. As part of the Town Council’s commitment to the well-being and economic growth of our area we see this fund as a way of helping our communities to recover from the effects of Covid and for individuals to use their potential to build and develop a new business in Pontypridd.”