Wednesday 17th October 2018 - Development and changes

Posted 2:15pm

The last couple of  months have been game changing in some respects for HMHB.

Incredibly it has been a month since the last entry - and this is only the second in two months.

This is down to two factors:

Firstly, I admit to being neglectful on entering here. No point in using any excuses, I could have added many times, as we have not been standing still - but part is down to getting people to actually use our blog and help push us.

Secondly, although we are making progress, it does feel a little like we have stagnated a bit. We are making huge strides, but it is frustrating.

So what has been going on?

We have started another Ajani programme - this time at Brickworks Community Centre, Islington. It was meant to be in September, but noone came. However, we launched with 8 people last week. It has gone down well, but we need to ensure all people come back - the feedback was terrific  but numbers did drop.

We launched our new look website - but we have to make a couple of adjustments as I feel a couple of pages are not working as well as I would like. More work ahead.

We are making great contacts and are looking to do at least two programmes over Nov/Dec - and these are free as we have lottery money - but although people are saying the project is good and they want to see us do well, I still feel some companies see us as competition, which we clearly are not.

We still need seed funding - and it appears the only possible way is going to be corporate sponsorship, as public sector money is almost impossible to get for business start ups - particularly to  cover salaries. We have some solid ideas for this, and it is a lot of work, but essential.

We want to launch some videos on youtube - something we have been talking about for some time - and are looking at ways we can stand out from others.

Altogether, it has been tough the last couple of months. I think we were riding a crest of a wave as we have some great things happen in the first six months, but we continue too persevere and push on - we have a terrific product, great ideas and ambition, and a lot of energy.