If only I could simply click my fingers and have my imagination converted into reality. How easy would that be?! Sadly there’s no such magic, so I guess we need some kind of plan.
Over the past 10 years I’ve been involved with a range of different non-profit and social programmes including “Reading Together”, Inner-City School Community Exchange Programmes working with 12 to 15 year olds in Manchester, general community work with the CSV programmes, audit work with the Manchester crime and disorder partnership, anti-discrimination work for the Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Archive, anti-war research during the Iraq conflict, improving online services for people with visual disabilities with the CamSight Accessible Web Project, and most recently I’m about to start volunteering again at the Wandsworth Connexions Base – just waiting for the vetting clearances to come through. Alongside this I can apply a pretty decent knowledge of industry, business, technology, the internet, Web 2.0, and marketing; and host of professional and consulting skills that I use in the work I now do, covering strategy, innovation, communication, financial planning, project management, and user experience.
Sounds impressive? Well, frankly it isn’t. There’s a lot I don’t know and I’m not an expert in anything. I don’t know enough about the needs of inner-city kids. I know how complex social networking sites are but have no idea how Facebook works behind the interface. I am not technical and I can’t code anything clever. I’m not a designer and I can’t do logos or visuals. I’ve only got so much time and there’s a lot of research we need to do etc. etc. The list goes on...
The last time I set up something like this, there was just me, myself and I. There were no social networks I could tap into, and frankly I didn’t know enough people that could’ve helped even if there were.
But things are different now. I’ve learnt some useful things from previous experience. I belong to a huge professional network I can tap into and I know a lot of successful and highly skilled people who care about the world around them and are inclined to give something back.
So Plan A relies on you :) and Plan B relies on the traditional funding and corporate development exercise. I'll explore these in the next couple of posts.
Getting it done
