Savage Social Enterprise Ideas for Cork

1st Mar 2021

This week ReThink Ireland are looking for ideas for social enterprises – businesses whose primary aim is enhancing their community rather than just generating a load of coin so you can buy a villa in Beara or a yacht in Crossers. They've got a load of coing to give away too. 

The deadline is Friday March 5^th  so if you’d like to make Cork a better place, but are short on plans, here are a few of the ones we’ll be submitting to help get your creative juices flowing..

Tea-mergency Rapid Response Tea-m
Let’s admit it: the fabric of Cork society is held together by a thick layer of caffeine. Without it, our Rebel civilisation may well collapse. For full disclosure, this writer is currently hopped up on a pot of triple-bagged Barry’s Tea (“drawn” for 20 minutes) being delivered directly to the frontal cortex by an improvised nasal tube that would surely win the equivalent of the Sam Maguire for medicine if published in the right scientific journal.
 
C’mere though, have you ever been in urgent need of tea ‘hit’ only to find that your box of Barry’s is empty? Did your despairing reaction require hospitalisation or did your better half consider giving you the boot with the mood change?

This social enterprise will dedicate itself to flying emergency tea bags via drone to anywhere in Cork within five minutes of receiving a mayday call.

While the temptation would be to build a smartphone app to allow desperately flagging Corkonians to order an aerial ‘sort-tea’, this is too serious to be fiddling with a phone. A strap-on panic button is the safest way to allow ‘victims’ to trigger this high-level emergency action plan.

Within minutes The Tae will be coursing through your veins again and you’ll return to ‘normal’.

Summer Camps in Cork for Needy Families
Families that have lost their way, their sense of pride in where they live or just simply really wish they were from Cork, will be matched with a family in the Rebel County who they will have the privilege of staying with for a week.

Through this extraordinary opportunity to live in close proximity to perfection, the visiting family, from the comfort of a large kennel placed out the Cork family’s home, will discover the enviable Corkonian contentment often confused with cockiness by outsiders.

This scheme is similar to a cross-cultural exchange except that the Cork family won’t be needing to visit the other family’s home – for obvious reasons.

Get a Lazy Neighbour’s Gaf Painted Up
Social enterprises are all about improving the community. If you’re sick of looking at the state of your neighbour’s manky gaf that’s leaving the locality down, this social enterprise could be the one for you.

Instead of proposing some fuddy-duddy, Clonakilty-style plan that brings a community together in perfect harmony to paint up a derelict or neglected property, this service will allow users to pay for constant stream of a callers to the property owners door to mock and shame the lazy fecker into putting down the bong and taking out the paint brush.

The budget plan starts with a well-trained actor doing a performance art piece outside the house as backdrop to a miserable scene in a play. If that doesn’t get the message across, the premium plan allows you to rent-a-crowd that all come with years of Turner’s Cross Shed experience taunting Dublin supporters (“You are a jackeen, A dirty jackeen, You’re only happy on dole day, Your mam’s out stealin’, Your dad’s out dealin’, Please don’t take my hub caps away”). A huge crowd gathers once a week and taunts the owner with chants about the state of their house.

An hour of that every Friday night, should spark a sudden interest in DIY, removing an eyesore from the community.
 
Tourism Enterprise: Building a Moat Around the County Bounds
Purely for tourism like. We propose to dig a big mad canal all the way from Youghal up to Mitchelstown, across to Charleville, down through Rathmore and finish off at the bridge in Kenmare – “accidentally” including the Kerry bits of the Beara peninsula (the lads would be very tired at the end and not paying full attention to the map, j’know?).

The scheme will create thousands of jobs in the beleaguered tourism industry as people travel from all over the world to experience the ‘Rebel pilgrimage’, travelling hundreds of miles around the edge of paradise by canal.

Admittedly, this also has the convenient side-effect of cutting Cork off from the rest of the island, but that’s not our intention. Swear to God, like. And the option to pay a little extra to hire a barge  with cannons that blast cabbages and rotten fruit into Not Cork is merely creating “added value” so we can increase employment.

Tindr for Vaccinated Couples
She’s a dentist, he’s working in pharma. They’ve both been recently vaccinated and after a year of lockdowns and little or no craic, they’re absolutely gagging for a party, but it’ll be months before their friends get their shots.

Our new smartphone app will be like Tindr for vaccinated couples (just without the awkward morning-after conversations). You flick through photos selecting couples that look like they might be sound to invite to your covid-proof gathering. Next thing you know you’re partying in a packed-out kitchen like it’s February 2020.