Social Enterprise Spotlight – Bùth Bharraigh
Posted: 27 January 2021, in News
Our newest Social Enterprise Spotlight is Sarah MacLean and Bùth Bharraigh. Bùth Bharraigh is a community retail and visitor hub in the heart of Castlebay, Isle of Barra. Read and share their Q&A interview below! Get in contact with Sarah on info@buthbharraigh.co.uk.
What’s your social and/or environmental mission?
Our mission is to help the communities of Barra and Vatersay to flourish by providing a wide range of opportunities: route to market for local producers, volunteering, training and work experience, local visitor information delivery.
How do you do it? (client group, practical daily work, customers etc)
Bùth Bharraigh is a community shop and visitor information centre. The shop was set up to sell local products but we also sell other goods such as wholefoods, books and yarn and provides other services such as laundrette, printing and copying and tourist information.
What’s your personal motivation for being a social entrepreneur?
Providing opportunities for other people and developing something which will benefit the community.
What are your current projects?
Launching a new website and spending more time planning marketing activities.
What exciting things do you have coming up?
Preparing and looking forward to welcoming visitors back to the island in 2021 when safe to do so.
Who do you want to work with more?
During COVID many training and networking events were put online – for us this was fantastic as travelling to the mainland for there types of events is expensive in terms of costs of travel and accommodation and time. It has been great networking with people in similar fields and I hope at least some of these opportunities remain after COVID.
What’s your biggest challenge?
Premises – we have been running a successful business now for over 7 years, yet we are hampered in future development by no certainty over our location.
What top tips would you give to other social enterprises?
There is never a straight path from A to B but keep going, work hard and it will come right in the end.