Posted 1:00pm
Around 18 months ago, Scott and I were very privileged to be invited to the House of Lords by Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson. She is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. In total, in her paralympic career, she won sixteen medals (eleven gold, four silver and one bronze) as well as thirteen World Championship medals (six gold, five silver and two bronze). She also won the London Marathon women's wheelchair race six times between 1992 and 2002. Incredible!!!
I had contacted her following an article in the paper. She was commenting on the lack of access to professional fitness advice for people out of work - either on JSA or ESA. It resonated immediately with me as I had been talking about HMHB for several years, with early intervention for people out of work on health and fitness.
Following a telephone conversation with her, we were invited to meet and chat about what we were doing, our concept, and moving forward. I felt very honoured as I know just how busy Tanni is on many different campaigns - she is probably one of the hardest working people in the House of Lords.
We got some terrific advice, but especially she pressed on us the need to actually start working with clients, even if that meant unpaid voluntary work. We also developed the concept further, and it was one of the reasons we approached organisations to run a pilot - which of course we did earlier this years with Single Homeless Project.
We have kept in touch, just updating her with what we are doing. With that in mind, we communicated this week as we are trying to raise some money through a GoFundMe page, and are hoping that she may be able to help us promote that. I don't know if that will happen. She probably gets a lot of requests to support a large number of projects and programs, so if nothing comes from it then so be it. But I know she read the email and she texted me to say she would contact this week. Any assistance would be incredible. We are just a small little enterprise, trying to establish ourselves among some huge companies as well as the NHS. It can be daunting. But we have a foot in the door finally, and we are determined to get heard.
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