We are looking to welcome a new member to the Board of Directors for SSEN. As a part of this process and to give members a chance to have a say, we make the appointment public and allow for two weeks for members to make any objections or queries about the proposed Director.
If you pay for our membership or are on our six months free membership, and would like to raise anything in regards to this appointment, you can email us at jodie@ssen.org.uk with valid reasoning and explanation for us to consider. This must be done before 25th July 2022. Where we don’t receive any objections or queries the appointment will automatically become official from 26th July 2022.
The Director we would like to bring onto the board is Rene Meijer. Rene is the current CEO for Food Works Sheffield and we asked him to tell us a little about himself so that you can find out more about him.
Meet Rene Meijer
“I'm the CEO of Food Works. I was born in New Zealand, raised in the Netherlands and came to Sheffield in 2005. After a varied career in Education, IT and project management, I joined Jo Hercberg as one of the Founding directors of The Real Junk Food Project Sheffield in May 2015. In the first few years my focus was on finance and operations. I looked after our accounts and worked on attracting the funding we needed to kick-start our work. Most importantly though I worked on developing the business models that allowed the organisation to deliver incredible social impact without the need to continuously attract charitable funding. In 2019 we changed our name to Food Works, and I took up the role of CEO.
Over the past 7 years I have experienced first hand how hard and rewarding it is to set up a successful social enterprise. Spending my working week on something that has purpose and meaning, rather than something that just pays the bills, is incredibly satisfying. And our planet and society desperately need more organisations that are run with a heart and a purpose, rather than just with a bank account. But that isn't easy. Getting the right support and knowledge, especially with something slightly off the beaten track, is much harder than it should be. A strong social enterprise network, run by and for the entrepreneurs who are building our social enterprises, can make a real difference. And now that Food Works isn't an all consuming enterprise for me anymore, I would very much like to invest some of my time into developing SSEN and making this journey a bit easier for others.”