Jessie Joe Jacobs

Jessie Joe Jacobs is a Teesside-based British political and social activist, speaker, and regional charity leader. She founded the charity A Way Out in 2002 and is the current director of the North-East charity consortium, the Northern Inclusion Consortium. Jacobs was also the co-founder of the free 'alternative' tabloid, The Eclipse in Tyneside and founded the 'I Love Stockton Me' social media project.
After announcing her bid in July 2019, in the October, Jacobs was selected to be the Labour candidate in the May 2020 race for mayor of Tees Valley, standing against current Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen.
== Early life and education ==
Jacobs was born in Stockton in County Durham, and attended the Grangefield Academy before going on to study Pharmacology at the University of Leeds and studying for a Master's in Management at Durham University.
== Charity work ==
===A Way Out===
Jessie Joe Jacobs is the founder and former chief executive of A Way Out Charity. She founded A Way Out after meeting an underage girl in Stockton who was trying to sell her body for sex.. A Way Out delivers services to vulnerable people, especially young people and women, around issues of drug addiction, alcohol misuse, depression, self-harm and sex exploitation, in communities, prison, schools and on the street. 
==== Awards and recognition ====
In 2009, A Way Out won a £100,000 donation from the Bank of Scotand's Social Entrepreneur awards. In 2012, Jacobs was nominated for a Gazette Community Champion award for her charity work by Stockton North MP Alex Cunningham .
Also in 2013, Alex Cunningham MP nominated A Way Out for a Centre for Social Justice award. In 2019, A Way Out was chosen as the Tees Valley Combined Authority's partnership charity for 2020 by Ben Houchen. Since its founding in 2002, over 5,000 people have been reached by A Way Out.
=== Northern Inclusion Consortium ===
Jacobs went on to become the Director of the Northern Inclusion Consortium. The NIC is a consortium of four founding members; Mental Health Concern, Changing Lives, Human Kind, and Groundwork The NIC exists to tackle regional inequality, deprivation, austerity and multiple needs and complexity.
The Northern Inclusion Consortium is currently running two projects; Step Forward Tees Valley and Moving On Tyne & Wear. Both Step Forward Tees Valley and Moving On Tyne and Wear are National Lottery and European Social Fund funded employability programmes which aim to get the long-term unemployed back into work, volunteering or actively searching for work. The NIC's charities represent around 100,000 people across the region.
==Community Work and Activism ==
In 2012, Jacobs founded the community project 'I Love Stockton Me', which aimed to celebrate the positive things about Stockton. In 2017, Jacobs co-founded the 'Eclipse', dubbed as an alternative tabloid and free newspaper delivered to 10,000 people across Newcastle, Gateshead and South Shields.
==Political Work==
In 2014, after stepping down as CEO of A Way Out, Jacobs worked as a researcher for Phil Wilson Labour Party MP for Sedgefield and during the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union, Jacobs was the North East field director for the cross-party Britain Stronger in Europe campaign.. Jacobs has also worked for the Trade Union Congress as a policy officer.
== Tees Valley Mayoral Candidacy ==
In July 2019, Jessie Joe Jacobs announced she was standing to be the Labour Party's candidate for the 2020 Tees Valley Mayoral election. Her opponents within the Labour Party were Dan Smith, an engineer and office manager for Paul Williams MP, and Darlington Councillor Mandy Porter.
=== Selection and Controversy ===
Jacobs was selected as the Labour candidate in October 2019, six weeks before the decision was originally due after she was the only candidate to be shortlisted. Jacobs received nominations from all seven Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) and all affiliated trade unions. Porter did not receive enough nominations to be shortlisted and although Smith did receive sufficient nominations, regional members of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party (NEC) opted to only shortlist Jacobs.
Hours after the decision was announced, Facebook posts from 2015 and 2016 written by Dan Smith emerged, in which he expressed support for Middlesbrough's Independent Mayor Andy Preston during his campaign to become the town's MP in 2015. He also criticised Middlesbrough's Labour Council over property deals, accusing Labour council members of corruption. In response, Dan Smith tweeted that the comments were posted prior to his Labour Party membership and he has learned from his past.
== References ==
== External links ==
* Jessie Joe Jacobs 
* Jessie Joe Jacobs on twitter
Category:British activists
Category:Mayoral elections