What does it do?

• Grace Chocolates support women who have touched the Scottish criminal justice system on their journey towards fulfilling employment. They produce and sell high-end chocolates to support women to improve and enrich their CV and their self-esteem.
• Income pre and post programme: £107,101 to £142,119
• Ratio of trading income to other income pre and post programme: 27% to 48% traded income (or 1:4 to 1:2 ratio)
• SSE programme Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneurs Trade Up Programme, jointly funded by The National Lottery Community Fund (2021).

Joyce Murray started Grace Chocolates in 2017 after volunteering at HMP Cornton Vale, a women’s prison outside of Stirling. Through producing and then selling exquisite hand-made chocolate online to corporates, hamper companies, events companies and retailers, they support women who have been affected by the Scottish criminal justice system.

80% of women touched by the criminal justice system have lived with abuse at some time in their life, and that as a result substance abuse is prevalent, which results in many ending up in the criminal justice system.

“Many of the women haven’t had a stable lifestyle from childhood, therefore many of them haven’t worked, have no qualifications, haven’t had a role model who has worked… so when we talk about ‘work placements’ or ‘work experience’ it helps instil the work ethos.”

The other challenge many of the women have is around accommodation. Many who come out of prison are housed in temporary accommodation; that could be a hostel or a B&B.

“Hostels aren’t great places if you’re trying to manage your addictions. If you don’t know where you’re going to sleep, you’re not going to work in the morning.”

Women benefit from Grace Chocolates in four ways:

• They can come along as regular production days, accessing work experience and trading;
• Through our Making Positive Changes programme, making chocolates and hearing from Disclosure Scotland learning what they need or don’t need to disclose if asked when going for employment;
• Attaining an industry recognised hygiene qualification;
• Personal development plan and CV support.

Grace Chocolates also run a mentoring programme, where they train mentors to support the women in a 1:1 relationship, and during COVID they ran online wellbeing sessions.

Since 2017, ten of the women Grace Chocolates have supported are now in employment, further education or running their own business, and 27 have achieved industry recognised qualifications. They’ve delivered nine wellbeing workshops, supported 36 women during 2021, and provided 13 work experience placements.

One of the women said:

“I feel my heart starting to beat again. It’s been dead for so long.”

Another said of the programme:

“One of the best things I have done. It helped me to rebuild belief in myself and build my confidence.”

Impact of the programme and grant

Like most organisations, Grace Chocolates sales were affected by COVID, and at first, their sales dropped. Despite this, the team have still managed to double their income year on year since they began, partly thanks to the skills Joyce learned on the Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneurs programme, incentivised by the Match Trading grants.

“Our impact has changed because of COVID, there have been so many variables. But we did well, and our trading meant we could access the full grant, which was great. We were fortunate to be in a strong position.”

The Match Trading grant that Grace Chocolates received through the Trade Up programme has empowered Joyce and the team to develop their website, which she anticipates will have a huge impact on their growth through improved marketing to improve their long-term sustainability and growth.

Joyce found the peer support and action learning aspects of the programme the most helpful;

“I think it brought a lot of wealth to the experience, being able to speak with others. Doing the action learning enriched my leadership. I was struggling with some aspects of my role with the board, and I used action learning to work through that. My relationship with the board is better now as a result.”

The future

Joyce aims to try and maintain their growth trajectory. There will be challenges including resourcing and capacity, from storage to human capacity.