AVIS Turner is on a mission to support adults with learning disabilities enter the world of employment and break down the social barriers they face.

Her dynamism in building up Basics Plus, an award-winning Scarborough organisation which offers new skills as the key to helping them cope, is the reason she has been nominated as the Business Personality of the Year, and the business is gunning for the Best Business and Education Link title.

Back in 1991, she co-ordinated the partnership project, Basics Plus, with four students literally working out of a garden shed and a budget of £12,000.

Today, it is a company limited by guarantee status, has an annual turnover approaching £500,000 and 70 students.

They all work out of new premises in Salisbury Street, learning how to sort different grades of paper for recycling, gardening and catering skills, plus other environmental and community activities.

So effective is the organisation that Avis was last year invited by the European Social Fund to present a paper on the benefits Basics Plus has brought to individuals.

Since it moved from Roscoe Street, Scarborough, into the nearby Mountview Business Park last year (armed with Investors in People status) the project has successfully placed ten students with 30 employers, voluntary and community groups throughout North Yorkshire.

Avis was also the 2003/2004 winner of the Duke of York's Community Initiative Award.

Taken into account was her project, Tailored Solutions, to identify potential employers and agree how students can contribute in the workplace.

Both students and employers get daily support from Basics Plus.

Kevin Rise, of consultancy Mason Capitano Limited, nominated Avis.

He said: "Her business intuition and drive to make Basics Plus sustainable in the long term has seen Avis lead a drive to develop income away from grants and towards trading.

"So successful has she been in this that Basics Plus' turnover to 2003 saw trading income rise by more than 80 per cent on the back of strongly developed partnerships and contracts with a range of public and private customers ranging from North Yorkshire County Council to recycling companies."

Updated: 11:30 Friday, September 24, 2004