All Together Edinburgh

All Together Edinburgh is a social enterprise with charitable status. It was set up in 2010 after recognising that there were very few training opportunities for people with learning disabilities to learn skills that would help them work within the retail/charity retailing sector or customer facing environment. We wanted to create more training and employment opportunities by delivering a training programme that would not only improve employability skills, confidence and self-esteem, but deliver an accredited, person-centred course that resulted in a recognised qualification. We decided that the training would be best delivered in a charity shop and we opened our first shop in June, 2011. The charity shop is an ideal practical setting to learn an array of skills relevant to the retail field. It also gives the trainee an opportunity to interact with the public and to increase awareness of people with learning disabilities. This is a unique enterprise and is the first of it’s kind in Scotland!