Our charity, IT4CH, is sponsoring several wonderful runners to run in the London Marathon to raise money for the charity. And look at what they have done to popularise it 
Pat Ryan, our wonderful CEO, has been considered to be a race favourite An extraordinary lady indeed.
As you might know, I am working with Home Start Hillingdon as well as LSE SIFE. I got these two organisations together. Home Start Hillingdon helps families with young children which are in distress. LSE SIFE wants to do something for the community using free enterprise. What better way to do this than to have LSE SIFE to push for improved financial and debt management of our families in need?
So LSE SIFE are working on coming up with a financial education package for our volunteers in HSH which will be deployed soon. In the meantime, I was very impressed and very very happy that these young un’s in LSE have started developing an app for debt management. Now isn't this impressive? Its just early days yet, but I am seriously impressed.
Good for you chaps, very good indeed. If this works out, I am going to try my level best to ensure that LSE SIFE pushes this out nationally if not globally.
SIFE Nottingham is working with IT4CH to help provide training to kids who are unemployed or whatever, this training is to fix computers which we provide, South Notts College provides the training, while SIFE helps procure the equipment and mentoring the kids on to further employment. A win win indeed.
Very chuffed with what the kids in SIFE Nottingham have done.
When I joined Home Start Hillingdon early last year, it was mainly from the perspective of having something nearby so that I can do something for the local community. As well as that, the idea that the charity is a bit public funded, quite a bit foundation and private funded, we have 40-50 volunteers and we touch up to 100 families every year is very good. When I joined, the charity was in deep financial trouble and if we didn't sort it out, the charity would have closed. This was just 1 month after I joined. Plus then we lost almost 60% of our trustees for a variety of reasons and we ended up with just two trustees, John and I. John was previously the treasurer and then he became the chair. I couldn't do it, I am already stretched with the other charities that I am involved in and refused to become the chair.
John worked his butt off to ensure we have a good financial foundation, he drove us getting good funding from the council and made the business case and ensured we are now in a sustainable element. We spoke to so many people, got stakeholders to buy in and we were successful. This was when John was unwell and he was in hospital pretty much the last quarter of last year. Very brave of him.
And then came the shocker in December, he resigned saying that he has to go back to hospital and then early this week, I heard the shocking news that he had passed on. I was seriously shocked, he was very healthy, about 38 years of age, a practising lawyer and he was finishing his MBA, writing his dissertation, very sporty and eating good food. He apparently had skin cancer and it became virulent and just in a matter of weeks he died.
We had a board meeting last week and I spoke about all what he had done for the charity. Frog in the throat time. Really feel bad about his loss. But this is the amazing thing about people like John. They get about their jobs and do so much for the community, over and above what one would have expected. They do not get recognition, they do not get the kudo’s, they are not publicly welcomed or congratulated, but they spend hours on doing things that help others, they are passionate about the downtrodden, the sick, the disabled, the ill, the poor, the mentally disturbed of the society. That’s the power of this society, how people quietly go about helping others, without expecting any return.
But I felt I had to write about these quiet people today. My father is another one of this kind of people, I have been speaking to him frequently these couple of weeks ever since my aunt died, of cancer as well. He was sobbing on the phone, poor chap. He was very close to her. She was also one of those quiet helpful kinds. And she used to make some brilliant dishes. Its not a good feeling to hear your father cry but such is life. So this week has been a very difficult one indeed.
So here’s to you, John Butler, I am sure you will be recognised in heaven for all the wonderful work you have done on earth. Thank you for all your help and all the families in Hillingdon who have been helped and will be helped more in the coming years will be cognisant of your brilliant work for the charity.
Rest in Peace.
We are advertising for more trustees at Home Start Hillingdon. Here’s one which went into the Women in Technology Group.
3 - Enthusiastic volunteer trustees required for Home-Start, the UK’s leading family support charity
Home-Start is the UK’s leading family support charity - they support families struggling to cope with young children who with serious problems such as mental illness, alcoholism etc. Home-Start train volunteers (who are themselves parents) who then work with social services, health, police, etc. to recover the family and avoid the children being put into care (each child in care costs up to £50,000) and Home-Start have managed to intervene in about 100 families per year over the last 12 years or so in Hillingdon. They have had a few trustee retirements recently and they would like to increase the number of trustees who have experience in fund raising. This is a high governance charity (since they work with children) and would appeal to people who want to gain board level experience of running a firm. They also have three MPs as their trustees and work closely with the local council. It would also ideally suit people who are within commuting distance of Hillingdon (north west London) as they hold their monthly meetings there and fund raising takes place in and around Hillingdon. In particular Home-Start Hillingdon would like to seriously increase the amount of technology they use - such as having revenue generating efforts through a web shop, having a better website, providing financial education to their families via mobile or e-learning, providing e-coaching, assisting the volunteers with knowledge sharing on the website, better Facebook/social media interaction etc. So somebody who has an interest in applying technology to assist and help fundraise would be ideal. Trustees can expect to spend around 12 hours a month on this rewarding role which enables much needed support for vulnerable families. For more information please contact Bhaskar Dasgupta, an existing Home-Start Hillingdon Trustee, on 07545 236 207 orbhaskar.dasgupta@hsbc.com or Tanya Link, Office Manager at Home-Start Hillingdon, on 01895 252804 or office@homestart-hillingdon.org.uk.
In other aspects relating to HSH, I had a nice meeting with LSE SIFE team and HSH Senior Coordinator and we agreed to push for more financial education training to our great volunteers and the families. We will do the first pilot run in Q1 2012 and then see how we can improve the offering. If it works out, it would be brilliant. The LSE SIFE team has been doing great, they have hooked up with Microsoft, did a great job in reviewing the current offerings for financial education out there and have got a full fledged team working on this. Good stuff chaps.
The background to this is important. The families which we help, are usually one step away from calamity and total disintegration. While the volunteers help in recovering these families, if we can give them some help with improving their financial condition, that would be brilliant. The kids wont have problems, well, not too many, but will be able to get the little bit extra. So I am very chuffed about this..
So we had our first meeting of the IT4CH charity where our brilliant technology ladies joined us. And they immediately made a huge difference. Its obvious that male trustees are utterly useless, and I include myself in that. We had brilliant ideas, we had great initiatives, we had spiffing discussions and we are going to move this forward. Hard. So brilliant stuff. One more trustee will join us soon, but in the interim, we should have fun.
But if there are anybody else who wants to help us? Volunteers, advisors, all welcome to join in and help. We are now starting to initiate projects relating to technology assisting sick children.
Mind you, we can also do with some trustees for the Home Start Hillingdon Charity. We are very happy, we have now confirmed funding from the council. Before people jump on this being a tax payer funded boondoggle, that is not true, the taxpayer money is used to fund a tiny team who train and manage up to 100 volunteers who actually deliver the benefits. Now if that is not community engagement, what is? I am very impressed with the girls in the charity and would appreciate having more trustees to help assist us to make this into something very good.
What else? Well, popped down to Swansea to lecture the MBA students, working with another university to potentially help them with an internship project, started this year’s mentorship with Manchester Business School, working with Essex on curriculum re-design and strategic positioning and finally i am sucking at Farsi, lol.
It was a good week indeed. Firstly, we received information that the funding for the HSH charity is now confirmed for another year at least and that is excellent news, we were on the verge of starting our close down process which would have been tragic for all the families in severe distress we support and our employees. But very happy about it and now we are going to really fix this place.
In particular, what I want to do is to launch an initiative where we train our families in proper financial management and literacy. This will improve their lives and be able to handle financials. Lack of financial management in families is one of the biggest causes and symptoms of family distress. Plus I should be able to get some funding for this. So I have engaged the LSE SIFE team to see if they would be able to find out what is out there in terms of financial education for families and explore ways that we can deliver thi provision. Should start hearing back from them soon.
I am having a chat with a chap from India who has done some amazing work with technology for social purposes, that is promising indeed, hopefully we will get some traction on that end and can get the IT4CH charity to fund it.
Found out some people in India who are working in the area of West Bengal and education, hopefully will be able to speak to them next week to determine some more local details on what can and cannot be done locally. Also speaking to somebody who is in the government to see what are the requirements that charities have to fulfil to operate in Didi’s state.
Tomorrow we have the launch of the Transformation Trust’s pilot with LSE SIFE with the trading futures game, that promises to be an excellent large impact initiative which, if it works out, will hit almost 800 schools and we will be able to improve financial literacy and hopefully get the students interested in trading.
Might also be helping to run a strategy session for STIR sometime this side of the year. I just hope my imminent knee operation doesnt muck up all these plans..
Good stuff, but I am personally very happy, extremely happy with the fact that HSH got funding, now we can make it sustainable and real high impact. Very very chuffed. It took a heck of a lot of huge effort, pain and work to get there. I was quite depressed and disheartened for several weeks, we lost people, we lost trustees and we lost hope (almost) but we succeeded. Pushed very hard, spoke to the MP’s, spoke to the council, spoke to funding agencies, spoke with the employees, constantly emailed and spoke with the trustees, big big job done by the Chairman. Big Society, here we come. Very happy.
