SES Celebrates 20 years of Community Enterprise Social Enterprise Sunderland, Sunderland’s Co-operative Development Agency, has been promoting, developing and supporting independent Social Enterprises in Sunderland for the past 20 years. Social enterprises assisted by SES now employ over 400 people in full and part-time employment, with a collective turnover exceeding £5million (as at June 2003). SES has also assisted people from hard-pressed communities to set up businesses including sole traders and partnerships. There are now over 100 trading businesses which fall within this category generating jobs and wealth in the City’s most deprived areas.   Sunderland Homecare Accociates at Work   SES has gained recognition as an example of good practice both at national and international levels. The Agency recently played host to a Japanese research team comprising leading Japanese academics. They visited Sunderland to learn from the experience of SES with the aim of putting their findings into practice for the benefit of their own communities. Even more prestigious, the Agency was recently invited by the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, to make a presentation at the House of Commons. The guest list included the 50+ MP’s with a New Deal for Communities project in their Constituencies, and the Heads of the Government’s Social Exclusion and Social Enterprise Units. SES puts its success down to the way it has targeted the City’s low income communities and the way it works with those who live in such areas. In particular it has used enterprise as a means of capturing the imagination of local people. It has engaged and encouraged them to take an active part in the regeneration of their communities by helping them to create their own employment and to create opportunities for others.