International Women’s Day 2022
We travelled to Manchester 235 for our first ever live event. Hosted by Daiva Byrne and FLIP, it was our chance to get into the community to meet everyone and get the word out as to what we wanted to achieve. We were just a couple of weeks old at this point, without any logo, website, social media presence or a sophisticated mission statement.
We had decided to just get out in the field and let this thing grow organically. We knew we wanted to create something tangible to help women in need, but we didn’t really have a clear plan for the future growth of the community. That would come naturally, right?
We have to admit, we were nervous:
Before we go any further, we pause to thank a couple of brilliant women who gave us a massive boost ahead of our launch:
- Daiva Byrne, Founder and Head of FLIP for allowing us to attend her flagship live event and collaborate with us.
- Maureen Bloechlinger, Founder and Head of Globtrotting Poker Women for helping us network and connect us with industry journalists.
- Jennifer Newall, Industry Journalist, who kindly wrote our very first piece of press.
These women took a leap of faith to support us, and we shall always be grateful.
The plan
Plan A was to ask for donations of toiletries which we would collect and circulate to local refuges and shelters. Which is a relatively easy thing to do. But the challenge then became how to make this fit with what our (initial) aims are, and then use it to build on. The primary focus of our first ever mission statement was that the beneficiaries of our work had to be the communities who we visited.
So we got to work finding an appropriate charity to support in the Manchester (UK) area. Two charities fit our bill immediately:
Emmeline’s Pantry
The Pankhurst Trust
Remainder of report coming soon…
