Tell all your friends! The Funding Network is turning five and they’re having a party. And, I’ve just found out that Hackney Laces will be one of the three projects listed above, pitching for funding. I’m both nervous and excited and would really love to have some familiar faces in the crowd, so please do come along!
Dan Pallotta, great talk.
In my limited six year existence working in the charity sector, I can relate to and agree with the vast majority of points covered in this TED talk.
Very often when I would tell people I worked for a charity they’d asked me if I worked as a volunteer. When I would reply by saying that I was actually employed by the charity, then a debate would start where I would told I should work for free because it’s for a cause and peoples’ donations shouldn’t go to a salary or overhead costs, and if I cared enough the money wouldn’t be important, and blah blah blah. This conversation happened again and again, almost like clockwork. So I copped out and started telling people I was a football coach. It saved me the speech.
When I was a kid, my sister and I used to love Red Truck Tuesday. It was the day when a special red rubbish truck would go around the neighbourhood and collect peoples big unwanted items to divert them from landfill. Missy and I used to find all sorts of treasures just siting on the curb, including one of these:
I do love a good crowdfunding platform, and Pursuit is my most recent find. It’s a site that allows amateur athletes in Canada the chance to gain support to achieve their athletic goals.
Athletes can create a profile, share their ambitions and experience and then offer something, called a ‘Give back’ for their supporters on a sliding scale. This could be anything from a signed poster to a personal training session with them.
For athletes trying to go pro that may not have the financial stability to quit working, or the backing of large commercial sponsors, Pursuit offers them a chance. And I think it’s ace.
Since taking a sabbatical from 11-aside football on Sundays I’ve been looking for something to fill the void, something to occupy those extra 6 hours on my weekend. And I think I’ve found it. Feed and Read. Cake and books. Best sunday ever, basically.
If teleportation was real, I would teleport to Toronto on November 19th to go to this Dinner Party. In addition to the evening’s proceeds supporting a great cause – The Stop Community programmes – my very talented, very clever sister Missy will be one of the guest chefs. I won’t embarrass her too bad here, but I will say she a very good chef and you won’t be disappointed. Tickets are available here.
I’d like to introduce you to Hackney Laces, a group of fabulous young women I have the privilege of spending time with. Speaking of fabulous women, the super talented and painfully modest Zoe Quirk made this video for us. In her spare time she edited hours of footage to make this little video as an introduction to Hackney Laces.
10 years ago, Facebook was still an idea and Google wasn’t used as a verb. Encyclopaedias lived in libraries, and tweet was the sound a bird made.
And now, the internet more so than any other platform in the past decade has changed the way we connect to the world, how we do business, receive and share information and so much more. It has even saved lives.
For Blog Action Day this year (a day where bloggers all over the world write for a cause), the theme is ‘the Power of We’. With the help of the internet we can now make a difference in ways we couldn’t in the past. We can now mobilise millions of people to support causes. We can crowdfund. And share energy. And the list goes on.
To fall in line with this year’s theme I thought it would only be appropriate for to help others to be the ‘we’ and be a part of something. So I’ve found five things you can do with a click of a mouse. Easy peasy.
1. Save the Arctic.
2. Stop land grabs.
3. Share GOOD inspiration with your friends.
4. Support a project that could change peoples’ lives.
5. Pledge to make difference – and then get others to join you.
To find out more about Blog Action Day, how you can get involved and to see some lovely posts, visit: http://blogactionday.org/.
It’s incredibly frustrating when you tell people you play football and they respond with ‘why?’ or a series of other questions. Women playing football feels like a foreign concept to many – it must be, given the things I get asked quite regularly as of late.
These questions range from, “but your boyfriend plays, right?” to, “are you American?”. I also get asked “do you play with the offside rule?” and “are your matches 90 minutes?”. I also hear “but you don’t look like a footballer” often. These questions and statements seem to facilitate a guided discovery process to ignorant people that need to prescribe a reason as to why a woman plays or has an interest in football.
It has been exactly a year since I was given an Unltd level 1 Award to set up the project now known as Hackney Laces. And a good year it has been.
What began as me and 7 girls on rainy November nights has now turned into ‘we’ and a small army of players. In the words of one of the girls, “we’re a real life football (and community) club.”