Kids Company Youth Social Enterprises: 2013 Pilot Record

All In All Transit, NewBiggz and the F.A-B Arts Company were three youth-led businesses launched through the Evening Standard’s Frontline London campaign with Kids Company in 2013. Each received a £10,000 start-up grant, but each tested a different route into legitimate work: removals, event production and educational drama.

This reconstruction brings together three lost Kids Company profiles, the Frontline London launch reports, early customer evidence and the surviving company record. It concentrates on what the enterprises did and how the pilot worked—not on turning their founders’ difficult histories into spectacle. The important story is the business design: grant capital, practical support, paying customers and a social purpose were meant to reinforce one another.

The three youth social enterprises compared

The comparison reveals why calling all three “enterprise projects” is not enough. All In All needed vehicles, scheduling and dependable labour. NewBiggz needed equipment, supplier networks and customer trust for one-off events. F.A-B Arts needed a safe, repeatable educational product that schools could buy. The grant size was equal; the route from grant to revenue was not.

How Frontline London and Kids Company divided the work

The Evening Standard launched Frontline London in October 2013 after reporting on gang violence and the obstacles faced by people trying to leave it. Its pilot selected three enterprises and used the newspaper’s Dispossessed Fund to provide £10,000 to each. The London Community Foundation assessed the grant applications and administered the fund.

Kids Company’s role was different from the newspaper’s. The launch description said the charity would provide key workers, business-development mentors and practical support to the entrepreneurs. Its own recovered profiles then acted as permanent introductions to the services, including enquiry forms for All In All Transit and F.A-B Arts and an email contact for NewBiggz. The Standard supplied funding, sustained editorial attention and an audience of potential customers and mentors.

The pilot’s theory of change

The design addressed a real circular problem. Someone can decide to leave harmful activity but still face a thin employment history, criminal record, weak professional network and no capital. Without legitimate income, the route away is fragile. Frontline London tried to break that loop by assembling five pieces at once:

1. a marketable service based on skills or experience the team already had;
2. small start-up capital for productive assets and basic infrastructure;
3. relational support from key workers and business mentors;
4. credible first customers generated through public exposure;
5. a social commitment to create work, change expectations and reinvest locally.

This was not a conventional employment programme and it was not a pure grant. Revenue from actual customers was intended to carry the enterprise after the launch money. That makes the first bookings significant, but a booking alone cannot prove long-term viability or social impact.

All In All Transit: the strongest surviving trading evidence

Daniel Barnes, then 26, and Michael Gonedro, then 24, founded All In All Transit as a removals, storage and packing service for homes and businesses. When the Standard profiled them on 8 October 2013, they had already made their first delivery about a year earlier and were building trade through word of mouth. Kids Company was employing the business on a retainer for deliveries.

The recovered Kids Company page says the firm had handled work ranging from Harrods Apartments to council flats in Peckham. The launch report also names the Bulgari Hotel and work beyond central London. These examples establish range, but they are customer anecdotes rather than a complete sales ledger.

What the £10,000 was intended to buy

The launch plan allocated the grant to a website, a branded delivery van and a specialist dump truck that could add building and waste-removal work. By 24 December, the Standard reported that the enterprise had used the money for a second van and its website. It also reported full house moves, office moves, council work and a Child Poverty Action Group office move. Daniel Barnes said the business had already hired young people for jobs.

The clearest later measure arrived in June 2014: the Standard reported that All In All Transit had billed £50,000 over eight months and was projecting an £80,000 year. “Billed” means sales invoiced or charged, not profit or cash retained. The source does not publish vehicle costs, insurance, wages, fuel, tax, bad debts or the amount available for community projects.

Why removals translated quickly into trade

Among the three models, removals had the shortest path from publicity to a paid job. Customers already understood the service, could request a quote immediately and could judge performance after one move. The productive asset—a van—could be deployed repeatedly. The founders also arrived with a year of trading evidence rather than launching from a blank sheet.

That does not make the model easy. A removals business is operationally unforgiving: reliability, damage control, insurance, driving compliance, disposal rules and cash flow matter. What the surviving evidence shows is early demand and revenue momentum, not a complete assessment of those systems or the company’s later life.

NewBiggz: turning a community network into event production

NewBiggz—short for “New Beginnings”—was presented as a wedding, corporate-event and private-party business. The launch team consisted of Pastor Mimi Asher, Karl Lokko and four friends. It was not starting without experience: the Standard records two years of ad-hoc community events in Brixton, including a 400-person Black and White Christmas Ball, a 300-person Lambeth Love Feast, weddings, barbecues, sports days, engagements and christenings.

The £10,000 plan covered a website, identity and equipment including a van and balloon-inflating machine. The social model was to make event planning more accessible, source DJs, performers, caterers and other talent through a local network, offer training and employment, and reinvest 10% of net profit in community projects.

From enquiries to a high-profile delivery

Within weeks, NewBiggz received enquiries for an engagement party and a 40th birthday and accepted mentoring from event-production company My Beautiful City. Enquiries are promising but are not revenue, so the later evidence matters more.

In December 2013, NewBiggz catered a reception for about 200 guests hosted by Ed Miliband and his wife at Lazarides Gallery. Sixteen people worked on the event, including Pastor Mimi. The Standard’s follow-up said four jobs were booked for the following year and that the team would continue its community Black and White event without charge.

The business was incorporated on 9 October 2013 as NEWBIGGZ LIMITED, company number 08724850. Companies House shows that it changed name to The Plaace Ltd in September 2014, then Prestige Cafe Restaurant Ltd in July 2015 and Mimi’s Diner Ltd in May 2016. The company dissolved on 17 April 2018. That official record traces the legal entity; it does not by itself explain why its name or trade changed.

What NewBiggz tested

Event production converts social capital into a product: a trusted network becomes catering, entertainment, decoration, logistics and hospitality assembled for a client. The high-profile reception supplied reputation that a young firm could not buy easily. Its trade-off was greater complexity than a single-service business. Every event combines suppliers, timing, venue requirements and labour, while revenue can be irregular.

F.A-B Arts: lived experience made into a school workshop

The F.A-B Arts Company was led by Feras Al-Bakri, then 25, with Philip Clarke and Lucy Shaljian. It offered educational drama workshops to secondary schools, sixth forms, further-education colleges and other youth settings. Topics listed in the recovered page included gangs, drugs, cyberbullying, conflict resolution and personal safety.

The team combined different forms of credibility. Feras had delivered drama workshops through Only Connect; Lucy had a Performance Studies degree and worked as a drama practitioner; Philip had experience in drama and youth groups. The recovered page says six workshops had been tested with Kids Company groups before the public launch.

The first external school evidence

By December 2013, Griffin Primary School in Battersea had commissioned two days of workshops for Year 5. Its headteacher and deputy head gave positive accounts to the Standard and said the school intended to book Year 6 the following year. Feras also reported a week of pupil-referral-unit workshops at £500 a day, plus bookings at Alexandra Park School and a media organisation.

This is stronger than a list of interested schools because it includes a delivered external engagement, buyer feedback and subsequent bookings. It is still not an independent outcome evaluation. The record does not provide pre- and post-workshop measures, comparison groups, attendance, safeguarding documentation or evidence about whether pupil behaviour changed.

A different kind of product

F.A-B Arts sold facilitated learning, not its founders’ biographies. Lived experience could make a workshop feel relevant, but the commercial product also required curriculum design, skilled facilitation, age-appropriate content, safeguarding and a format schools could commission repeatedly. The reported £500 day rate gives a rare price point in the archive; it does not tell us the net income after preparation, travel and staffing.

What was promised, evidenced and left unresolved?

The Standard is an indispensable contemporary source, but it was also a funder, promoter and customer-acquisition partner in the initiative. Its reporting documents dates, grants, named customers and attributed sales figures; it should not be treated as an independent impact evaluation. The lost Kids Company pages have a similar limitation: they show how each enterprise described itself, not audited performance.

What this pilot still teaches about youth enterprise

Start with a customer problem, not a redemptive story

Each viable offer answered a recognisable buying need: move property, organise an event or run an educational workshop. Public interest in the founders opened doors, but a customer still needed reliable execution. That distinction protects participants from being valued only for their past.

Match capital to the business bottleneck

All In All could turn a vehicle directly into delivery capacity. NewBiggz needed several smaller pieces of event infrastructure and a supplier system. F.A-B Arts required product development, school access and facilitation capacity more than heavy equipment. Equal grants are simple to administer; tailored spending is what makes them useful.

Wraparound support and business advice do different jobs

A business mentor can help with pricing, bookkeeping, marketing and contracts. A key worker can support the instability or practical barriers that make consistent trading harder. Frontline London explicitly included both. This fits the broader Kids Company services and centres model, in which practical, emotional and specialist help were intended to sit together.

Measure the commercial and social sides separately

Revenue, gross margin, repeat customers and cash flow show whether the business works. Sustained jobs, training completed, earnings progression and community reinvestment show whether its social purpose is delivered. A powerful founder story is evidence of one person’s experience; it is not a substitute for either set of measures.

Follow-up is where a pilot becomes knowledge

The archive is unusually rich for its first nine months and poor thereafter. It records grant inputs, first jobs and All In All’s early billings, but not a common 12-, 24- or 36-month scorecard. A stronger modern pilot would publish the same small set of outcomes for all participants, explain exits and business changes, and preserve participant consent about personal stories.

The three enterprises formed one strand of Kids Company’s work, not its whole service. Read the Kids Company Archive for the wider record, or the campaigns and events reconstruction for other projects whose public promises and outcomes need separating.

Questions about the three enterprises

What were Kids Company’s three youth social enterprises?

They were All In All Transit, a removals business; NewBiggz, an events business; and the F.A-B Arts Company, which sold educational drama workshops. They were backed in 2013 through the Evening Standard’s Frontline London campaign in partnership with Kids Company.

How much funding did each enterprise receive?

Each received a £10,000 start-up grant from the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund, making £30,000 across the three. The London Community Foundation assessed or administered the grant process, while Kids Company provided support around the entrepreneurs.

Did All In All Transit become a real business?

Contemporary reports document a year of early trade, paid home and office removals, a second van, young people hired for work and £50,000 billed over eight months by June 2014. The surviving record does not provide profit, accounts or a verified current trading status.

What did NewBiggz do?

NewBiggz planned weddings, corporate events and private parties using a community network of event and entertainment skills. Its documented work included catering a 200-person reception hosted by Ed Miliband and his wife in December 2013.

What did the F.A-B Arts Company teach?

Its drama workshops explored gangs, drugs, cyberbullying, conflict resolution and personal safety for schools, colleges and youth settings. A two-day Year 5 engagement at Griffin Primary and further bookings were reported in late 2013.

Did the enterprises give 10% of profits back to the community?

The recovered profiles state that each intended to donate or reinvest 10% of net profit in community projects. No surviving accounts or distribution report checked for this reconstruction proves how much, if anything, was ultimately transferred.

Was the pilot proven to reduce gang involvement?

No programme-level causal evaluation was located. The record contains founders’ testimony, key-worker support, customers and early trading evidence, but it cannot quantify how the pilot affected gang involvement over time.

Is NewBiggz still operating?

The company incorporated as NEWBIGGZ LIMITED in October 2013 later changed its name three times and dissolved in April 2018. That legal entity is not active. This page does not assert whether any individuals later traded through a different organisation.

Can I use the old Kids Company forms or email addresses to book them?

No. The forms and contact details belong to historical pages and have not been verified as current. This record preserves what the ventures did; it is not a present-day directory or booking service.