It has been a little while since I last posted about Namu and what we have been doing, in part this was because I felt it was ‘boring’ stuff and I had convinced myself you all didn’t really want to hear about the ‘non-sexy’ stuff.
I was told off (many times!) by my wonderful friend Nigel from Cardboard Zebrawho has donated and worked on this website for us, but I digress.
I decided to tell you about it eventually because I believe WE are together building something bigger than each of us individually, we are growing a ‘safe’ space for where our small ideas can come alive and impact some people. It only takes one, right? In case you haven’t worked it out by now I am a dreamer.
SO, on the 19thof Feb 2019 we officially became a Charity in the UK! I never really saw this coming (yes, a ridiculous thing to say in hindsight), but I just thought we would just carry on as a small group of friends doing a little here and there. I finally decided to do apply for charity status because our story spread and even more of our friends and their friends and colleagues wanted to help. I wanted us to be even more transparent and accountable to all who have kindly fundraised and donated items to our various projects. I wanted everyone to be assured of where every penny/dollar/naira has gone.
I also wanted to be able to approach bigger philanthropists with our ideas in the hope that they might buy in to this simple approach and help us make it happen (this bit still very much a dream, but from little acorns big walnut trees grow right?)
In other words, we would like to empower members of deprived communities to use what they have around them to earn a living. Either by training and education and/or offering healthcare projects. We want to use any of our available skills to make a difference to the communities we serve.
***Personally, that was the point where I realised our efforts needed to become more formal
