I spent some time last week with schoolkids who were selling The Big Issue.
This isn’t some Victorian-era style new sales wrinkle, incidentally. They were involved in a project between The Big Issue and the Social Enterprise Academy to shine a light on the small businesses some school pupils in more than a dozen schools are running.
As part of it, we worked with the pupils to produce an edition they could sell in schools and their local communities.
And so, last week I was at the council office in Paisley as Mary Russell School pupils sold their editions (see page 9).
They flew through them. They also upsold by adding in the school magazine they produce. They were spectacularly good.
We should remember that out there in the everyday there are incredible people just getting on with business and working their way through
The money they made they will reinvest into buying supplies needed to run a breakfast club for pupils in their school. It’s a simple, but brilliant, circular scheme.