Mecoco, part of Sense Scotland, makes candles, wax melts and diffusers for sale, while also providing work experience opportunities for young people and adults with complex disabilities.
Project Description
Mecoco means "Meaningful Contribution in the Community". We make beautifully hand-crafted home fragrance products-candles, wax melts, and reed diffusers-but our real purpose is about people. Our volunteers, most of whom are profoundly disabled and have complex communication and support needs, are involved in every stage of the process, creating products that are as unique, colourful, and creative as they are.
Our volunteers are not defined by what they can't do. Instead, they are recognised and celebrated for what they can. Many are non-verbal, use wheelchairs, or need full-time care-and yet at Mecoco they take on real responsibilities. They clock in, work in teams, wear uniforms, take tea breaks, and receive expenses-just like any workplace. They are proud to be part of something meaningful. And they belong.
Based in our Dalry workshop our opportunties include:
Volunteering for local disabled and non-disabled people for one half day session each week, in small groups throughout the week.
Work experience (6 week placements) for young people from local ASN school, Lockhart School
Long term highly skilled employment for our two Wax Wizards who support volunteers to maximise the range of tasks each volunteer can be involved in and allow volunteers to be involved in more complex tasks. They are also responsible for order production and packing, stock checking and ordering materials, and new product design.
Being part of Mecoco brings huge benefits to our team including:
Health and Wellbeing
In addition to the skills development, job satisfaction, personal fulfillment, and positive sense of identity from completing meaningful tasks that Mecoco work experience provides, it also offers huge social benefits for volunteers who get to experience being part of a team, being involved and contributing within their community.
All volunteers experience the health and wellbeing benefits from meeting new people, making friends, inclusion within the Mecoco team and the wider community, developing new skills, and helping others to learn new skills and fulfill their potential.
Bringing Communties Together
We're proud to say that Mecoco brings together one of the most diverse workforces in the country. Disabled and non-disabled people work side by side, learning from each other in a space that is fun, respectful, and deeply inclusive.
In addition to providing meaningful work experience, volunteering with Mecoco improves social inclusion, helping to overcome the isolation and marginalisation that people with complex needs often experience, particularly after they have left school and do not have access to the opportunities for employment, volunteering and education open to their non disabled peers.
Through the time spent working together in small teams each week, as well as an active WhatsApp chat to bring the whole group together, the volunteers have developed a lovely supportive community and engage in social activities and are also fully included within Sense Scotland events such as our Annual Ball and Staff and Violunteer Awards, with one of the volunteers shortlisted for 2024s Volunteer of the Year.
We also attend markets, fayres and events and volunteers often play a key role in these events, selling their products directly to other members of the community, changing perception of disability and demonstrating their abilities.
To support the sustainability and growth of Mecoco we have been looking at reducing our costs and one way was to move our website from the Shopify platform to WooCommerce, saving £2500 per year. We would like to invest in Facebook advertising for our new website. In particular to offer the following
We have the ability to offer customers a variety of Subscription Plans to guarantee monthly income and an increase in these product sales. We currently offer one subsciption option but would like to add the following (with every 4, 6 and 8 week options):
Surprise Subscription-Different products dependent on the price point chosen. £10/£15/£20 per month
Wax melt only subscription-Wax melts only, quantity dependent on the price point chosen. £5/£10/£15 per month
Diffuser subscription-Refills or new diffusers dependent on the price point chosen. £10/£15/£20 per month
We require to advertise these new products and would like to target customers online. We are requesting a grant of £2000 to cover the cost of the Facebook ads.
We have experience of using Facebook ads to promote our events, with recent examples including:
Abseil-£100 spent, 170 leads generated. This led to 6 participants and £640 fundraised income so far with fundraising still ongoing
Psychic Night-£250 spent, 207 leads generated. This led to 40 ticket sales and an estimated £974 in income, including ticket sales of £650
This experience gives us confidence that this approach would also be effective to boost Mecoco sales.
Supporting this request would enable us to increase our sales income and also offers regular income which allows us to plan ahead in terms of production and volunteer numbers. Most importantly increasing our income will allow us to sustain and grow Mecoco which allows us to continue to bring the benefits of being part of the Mecoco team to our current volunteers and open up the vital opportunties to other disabled young people and adults.
Your support would directly benefit some of the most marginalised individuals in our community. People for whom society often holds very low expectations. People who are seen as a burden, when in reality, they have so much to offer-if given the chance.
Location: We were established in 2019 as a social enterprise to fill a gap that no one else was addressing: to give disabled people in Dalry and across North Ayrshire the opportunity to experience real, meaningful work in a fully inclusive, respectful, and empowering environment. We were founded specifically to provide opportunities for young disabled people from the local area, and the wider disabled community, who were leaving school, and would otherwise face a future with little or no access to employment. Six years on, those same young people are still with us – and thriving. Since the beginning Mecoco has been based in our workshop in Dalry where the tasks and environment have been designed to be as accessible as possible for a wide range of disabilities and needs. The workshop is accessible in terms of physical access and contains an accessible toilet, and changing place. It is also a workplace where disabled and non-disabled people work side by side, learning from each other in a space that is fun, respectful, and deeply inclusive. The workshop is open to the public for sales and events and every visitor leaves inspired by what our team achieves.
Proposed on behalf of: The organisation is Sense Scotland which is a Scottish charity and specialised social care provider supporting people with communication support needs associated with complex and sensory disabilities, and their families, where individual needs and choices come first. The project does not involve any partners but we are continuing to build strong relationships within the local community including developing links with the local ASN school, Lockhart School to offer work placements and attending many school fayres, community events, farmers markets etc.
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