Saturday 14th January 2017 - our first program confirmed

time to celebrate

Posted 1:30am

Yes, it's an early morning posting - so technically Friday night.  And I really should have posted in the last couple of days, so here goes a long posting.

Firstly, and most importantly, after years of preparing we have confirmed out first Ajani program will start with Disability Action Islington on the 23rd March - a nine week program.  Ironically this is around nine weeks away.  I am thrilled.  We may even be able to start another program before then - but maybe we can aim for Single Homeless Porject around the same time, and start both in the same week.  This means we can prepare together.

There is still a lot of work to be done, but this will give us an opportunity to show what we can do, find out what works and what does not work, as well as give us a stronger argument with funders.

A lot does seem to be happening behind the scenes as well.  Our eight Clissold Park Izzwalk yesterday had a participant from Islington Council Media.  We are going to be featured on their website, as well as in the Newsletter that goes to all households.  We have also made some cracking contacts from Twitter - but I am still waiting to see if they are one offs or able to help us in the future. Naturally I will follow everything up.

With nine weeks to go to the start of a nine week program I have decided to restart my diaries and my own targets from Monday - I can then bring nine weeks of completed personal journey papers to the first program on the 23 March, using myself as a good example (I hope).  This gives extra emphasis to sort my own fitness/health which has taken a bit of a hammering in the last two weeks because of other issues.

What a journey we have been on - and hopefully this is the start of another.  It feels a bit like vindication for my persistence.

I am now going to slightly change the tack on the blog and social media - aiming more at the service users we are gong to be taking on.  We will encourage all participants to subscribe to our Youtube channel ( hmhb2016 ): like our Facebook page ( healthymindshealthybods ); like our blog (which is here); follow us on Twitter if they have it ( @hmhb2016 ); and save our website in their favourites.

It is very important we use Social Media to the fullest potential - and I am meeting Kacper, who has designed our website, on Sunday to go over any tweaks that we need to correct or change, as well as demonstrate retrieval of emails etc.

Exciting times!!!!