The News launched its Celebrate Cambridge campaign earlier this month to look at all that the city is doing to continue its spectacular growth. We feel there is so much to celebrate in Cambridge and so much to look forward to. This week, we're focusing on business, and today the spotlight falls on the social ventures looking to make the world a better place.

Cambridge is home to a thriving community of firms looking to make society a better place for all of us.

The city's growing band of social impact ventures aim to solve societal problems in the UK and further afield, and receive help and support from a number of organisations working locally.

Chief among these is Allia, based at the Future Business Centre in King's Hedges Road. The charity provides business support, work space and finance solutions to help social ventures start up, grow and create social benefit, and has assisted 400 entrepreneurs since 2013. It recently launched Serious Impact, a campaign which aims to offer social impact ventures more help to grow.

Caroline Hyde, Allia's director of workspace and enterprise support, believes the post-Brexit vote UK could be the perfect place for these innovative start-ups to thrive.

“Entrepreneurs flourish in times of uncertainty and change," she said. “This is because people are more open to new ideas, technologies and ways of working than they are when the economy is stable. While Brexit will undoubtedly mean a period of uncertainty for everyone, we also believe it is possible for local impact ventures to create positives out of the negatives."

The Future Business Centre is also home to Cambridge Social Ventures, formerly known as Social Incubator East, a start-up incubator dedicated to the social sector. Graduates include KisanHub, a software business that helps farmers make better decisions so that they can improve crop yield, and Sugarwise, which wants to become the “kite mark" for low-sugar food and drinks.

Elsewhere in the city, SimPrints, a winner at the 2016 News Business Excellence awards, has developed a novel way of keeping track of medical records in the third world by using a patient's fingerprint. Harry Specters is creating employment opportunities for young people with autism – as well as delicious sweet treats – at its chocolate factory, and Waterscope wants to revolutionise the way water quality is monitored in developing countries by marketing its cheap, 3D-printed test which can be distributed to communities around the world.

The production line continues to churn out socially-conscious entrepreneurs, with the likes of CamSES, which says it can purify water using sunlight now looking for backers to bring their ideas to life.

Martin Garratt is CEO of Cambridge Cleantech, the membership organisation supporting firms working in the clean technology sector. He believes the next generation of 'green' companies could be big players in the business world.

“We have supported many start-ups in the cleantech sector, but we also wish to provide support to the next generation of growth companies that are showing real potential and one of these might become the 'next ARM' of the Cambridge Cluster," he said.

  • During our four-week Celebrate Cambridge campaign, we've already focused on transport, and will be looking at education, lifestyle and what's being done to ease the housing problems that can make Cambridge a difficult place to find a home.Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner and council leader Lewis Herbert gave their backing to Celebrate Cambridge and said there is so much the city has to look forward to and offer.