Monday 31st July 2017 - prep, prep and more prep

Posted 8:00pm

The last few days have been full of paperwork and preparation.  We have a potentially big meeting this week, so I wanted to pull out all the stops. I have created a PowerPoint presentation of twenty slides around the finished Ajani pilot - and am pleased with it. Accompanying that, I have drawn up a three page report.

Saturday, Rosie came along to join in with our weekly fitness session.  It is great to see how more confident she is with her appearance.  I am still hopeful that Michael will come back too. Our third successful user, Wayne, is making better decisions with his life too - and all three have said we have helped them over the last couple of months.

I attended the Highbury Fields walk today - first time for nearly three months as it clashed with the Ajani Monday morning project. It was lovely to go along, but I still think we will provide a new walk around the funding we have asked for - on another day.

Thursday 27th July 2017 - cloudesley, connect, emails

Posted 4:50pm
Couple of busy days gone past.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time completing our funding application to Cloudesley - to expand and manage our Izzwalkz initiative.  Overall we have asked for around £6,600.  This will cover the costs to run and oversee 260 walks in Islington in one year - five a week. It averages out at approximately £25 per walk - which I think is value for money considering what we are trying to achieve.

The funding would cover first aid training for volunteers, plus a comprehensive first aid kit for each walk. It would also cover all marketing for the project - from posters and flyers, to social media and adverts, as well as our ongoing work on the website.  We have asked for funding towards volunteer expenses - we need one on every walk - and this would cover travel, washing (official clothing), mobile and general time - we asked for £10 per walk for this.  Finally there would be extra insurance costs - as well as clothing costs: t-shirts for summer, caps, warmer clothing in winter - all with the Izzwalkz logo on them to show they are walk leaders.

Naturally there are no guarantees on funding. We did have a good meeting with their funding director, but he explained they do get a large number of applicants.  There is a total of around £50,000 to be spent, and they normally target six to seven projects, to spend anything up to £10,000.  We hope our £6,600 bid will be successful. We demonstrated that our walks are aimed at all ages, but in particular the older generation, as well as those going through physical or mental health issues - and that the benefits of walking are well-documented.  We can live in hope.

We have contacted Connect Help On Your Doorstep. According to their website:

"Help on Your Doorstep is a registered charity (number 1133145) working in the London Borough of Islington. Our team works across Islington, with offices in EC1, Canonbury, Caledonian Road, Finsbury Park and Archway."

"Help on Your Doorstep aims to make a visible difference to the health and well-being of the communities it serves by empowering individuals to overcome the barriers they face and improve their lives. We do this through pro-active engagement with local people, professional provision of information, advice and guidance and in partnership with local service providers."

We have asked to meet up as they have terrific connections throughout the borough and deal with many people face to face.  Getting our Ajani and Izzwalkz message out could be easier through them.

Finally, we have made email contact with some significant people.  I was passed the number of a director of a financial management company who may know people who would like to put money into our venture - again no promises. I have also contacted Councillor Caroline Russell who I met earlier this week, sending her more information about us, and talked about the Local Initiative Fund that can help with the walks. We have many more emails to get out.

Most important for now is preparing for our SHP meeting next week - we also have more video filming, our stop-smoking event, and another outdoor fitness session all going on. I wonder what we will be able to achieve when we actually access salary funding!!!!! 

Tuesday 25th July 2017 - website, program review, councillor

Lazza and Caroline Russell, Islington Highbury East Councillor

Posted 9:55pm

Due to examinations and holidays we have not updated our website for a while. But thankfully our guru master, Kacper, is free for a few weeks before university and we are updating it in the next few days. I am very happy with how things are going, and he will be looked after once we obtain funding as everything has been done for free, which is tremendous. (just in case he reads this!!)

We have made serious changes to wording and continue to make changes with pictures on all our pages.. It is still a work in progress but it was very important to update wording as more and more people have access to the site as we progress. Ajani and Izzwalkz are both coming along well, with great feedback, and it was good to be able to get a few photos around. I also want to see if we can get some video on there.

Kacper came up with a great idea to put a paragraph about donations, which has a "donate" button that will link through to our GoFundMe page. Sadly, we are still waiting for our first donation - but we have a few irons in the fire on that front at the moment - which I will talk about another time.

Yesterday morning, I met with Luke and Dean to have a thorough review of the pilot Ajani program, to talk about the good and bad points, changes we were going to implement, and how can learn and move forward. I thought it was a terrific chat and very constructive. I feel blessed to have these guys on board with me - this is a team, not just me (which it felt like for a long long time).

This evening I met up with local Highbury East Islington Councillor Caroline Russell. She is very much into getting people active and walking and particularly was pleased to hear about our Izzwalkz initiative. There is a Local Initiatives Fund where you can access a small amount of funding for something in this area - and Izzwalkz Clissold Park clearly comes under that remit. I am going to email her some papers and get an application form. But I also asked if I could keep her informed as we talk to the Islington CCG and SHP, and she was happy to agree to that.

Tuesday 25th July 2017 - fitness sessions, funding

Our founder, Lazza, dancing through the
exercise ladder in Highbury Fields

Posted 9:40pm

First of two entries today

I realise we have not posted here since Friday, but we have not been sitting back doing nothing. In fact we are pushing harder and harder.

Saturday we had our normal weekly fitness session - and it was great to have Rosie come along, considering the Ajani course has finished. Actually, we were hoping people would continue to attend our events, and this is proof that we are on the right track

I think the inclusion of equipment is a big thumbs up. I am so glad we have started to invest into the business in this way - despite our lack of funding. It just goes to show that we can build things up with access to funds.

We also went along to watch the GoIslington event on HF, despite the wet weather. There were various sporting activities, as well as a large climbing wall, and a tent that held spiders and snakes!!

We are in the process of completing a few applications for various funding and help options. We have an August interview with Voluntary Action Islington in regards to a years free business advice.  We will be sending off the Cloudesley application for Izzwalkz tomorrow. The Gunners Fund have confirmed receipt of application and said their committee is meeting in the next few weeks.

The "to-do" list is over 25 items, but I am going to hit it hard in the next three days. Next week is very busy, and could be crucial in our next direction. So preparation is key.

Friday 21st July 2017 - applications, assessment, spreadsheets, CCG

Posted 4:45pm

Another week over - and one that has again been busy but productive. We had our final week of our pilot with S.H.P, a trip out to Islington Museum, attended the SHINE event managed by S.H.P, our weekly Thursday Izzwalkz walk, and a solid meeting with our business guru, Scott.

This weekend is going to be just as hectic. We have our weekly fitness session to run, and afterwards we will be attending a massive sports event on Highbury Fields. From what I gather,it is called the GoIslington Festival, and this is it's fifth year.  It is a celebration of over 20 sports, and also involves Dance and Live Music.  There is participation and lots going on - should be fun.

I have a couple of applications I want to get off on Sunday night, ready for people to see on Monday. The first is our Cloudesley funding application, based around our Izzwalkz initiative. I like to think we will get something - even if not the whole amount we are looking for - which is just over £5000. But who can tell?

The second is something I viewed via Voluntary Action Islington, as well as being forwarded to me from S.H.P. There is a Capacity Building Essentials Project, that offers assistance towards Business Planning, Financial Management, Publicity and Promotion, Fundraising, Monitoring and Evaluation. Delivered through a series of one-to-one sessions and training workshops - all over one year. The project itself starts in September.  It's an interesting application, very detailed. I thought at one stage we would not actually be applicable, but have been encouraged by V.A.I to submit.

I went through some financial spreadsheets with Scott yesterday as we approach SHP to do further courses. I value his input and opinion very much, and he makes excellent changes.  It's a touchy subject in a way. We need to cover our costs and some salary, but do not want to either undercharge ourselves, or put ourselves outside their own budgets. I am sure we can get it right. Our meeting with them will be at the start of August, and i propose to do a presentation as well as a report - want to look as professional as possible.

This weekend I also need to get an email off to our C.C.G contact - along with several other emails. The to-do list, that I had made serious inroads into, has grown once more. It seems never ending, but that is part of getting the project off the ground.

Finally, I have adjusted the wording on the GoFundMe page - we have had Zero payments so far - as I felt that my first draft - that included some personal stuff at the start - may have been off putting for people, as it may have appeared that I was asking the money for myself - when in fact it is purely for H.M.H.B and the projects.

Wednesday 20th July 2017 - evaluations, spreadsheets, stop smoking

Posted 11:55pm

It's a late night entry today - but that's because I have been working late.

For our crucial meeting with SHP next week, where we will be discussing the pilot program, and further possibilities, I needed to create two spreadsheets - one to do with just continuing with SHP on a small basis - but getting income; the second one is for the, hopefully, opportunity of applying for the Big Lottery to do a lot of courses with SHP partnership.

We have sent through our evaluation sheets to SHP for the people who were on our course.We could have handed them out on Monday during the course but felt we did not want to waste time during the day. And it seemed fruitless to give them to the service users to complete later as they could get lost. However, if the SHP key worker fills them out with the user on their next visit then we are guaranteed to get them back properly.

Finally, I have created a poster for our Stop Smoking event on Thursday 3 August.  It's all fun here. My to-do list has changed dramatically from last Friday - but with additions is just as long. Unfair!!

Tuesday 18th July 2017 - SHINE event, plus BITC news

Dean and Lawrence, standing either side of

SHP Aftercare Recovery Manager Joe

Posted 5:20pm
Third blog entry of the day.

Dean and I attended the SHINE event being run by SHP today - an event to showcase their service, which was celebrating its 40 year birthday - but also to promote the various projects running alongside them, and other organisations they cooperate with.  We were delighted to be asked to present our project - which we did at the beginning - and we incorporated some stretching and exercising too, getting the audience to participate - which went down very well.

It was a great event, with various speakers. We made some good contacts and pushed our Saturday fitness session with a few people.  These kind of network events can be brilliant. You are hopefully going to get yourself noticed, as well as make a few contacts that can be mutually useful.

We also spoke to Business In The Community today on the phone. They were just seeing how I was doing following the Ready For Work programme I did a couple of years ago - which is where I met my business mentor Scott. However, they also have some terrific business contacts, and I cheekily asked them if we could perhaps use that with our GoFundMe page - and they were quite open to talk about it. This could be a fantastic way to boost our image, and maybe get someone to actually give some money on the page.  There is so much we want to do, and so much we need to prepare for, but unless we can get some funds it just does not happen.