Wednesday 5th May 2010, 11:10Learning to Share I learnt a very good lesson on my travels last week. “How to Share.” I was stuck last week in Madrid as part of the Volcano Ash problems. After 4 days I decided I really had to break out and strike for home otherwise I feared I may be skyping my wife and kids on Christmas day if I was not careful. The journey proved to be a real adventure with everybody being very kind and helpful to this english man trying to get home.
Whilst waiting for the next train to Dax in Northern France, I went to the local shop and bought a bottle water, a English new.. View Complete Post Saturday 17th April 2010, 11:34 China a country full of friendsLast week I had the opportunity to travel to China. The North West of China is a forbidding place in the winter. Temperatures of below 40 and driving wind make it an inhospitable place. However, the warmth of the people I had the chance to meet more than makes up for the chill. In all the travelling I have done over the last ten years I have never been made to feel so welcome so quickly. The Deputy Mayor and his team went out of their way to extend to me a welcome reserved for old friends. I was set up in accommodation with all my needs looked after. I was taken to every meeting in an offic.. View Complete Post Sunday 21st February 2010, 00:57Twitter InviteIf you are twittering and you would be interested in following me my twitter contact details are http://twitter.com/roynewey
Look me up some time. I update my twitter daily and really appreciate the feedback.
If you have a twitter account let me know who you are and your contact details. I would love to hear about your experiences of Improving Peoples Lives; the good the bad, the ugly and the amazing. Perhaps you want to share your fantastic habit, your passion for your allotment or just comment on the craziness of life and 2010.
I look forward to getting to yo.. View Complete Post Friday 19th February 2010, 16:25We Are All House Builders I was in Africa at the start of January and I had the opportunity to spend some time with groups of unemployed people. I wanted to hear from them the barriers they felt were preventing them for getting into employment. After an hour I had learnt much more. One of the group who had been successful in obtaining employment was sharing with others his perspective on what had turned around his fortunes. He described a story;
View Complete Post Thursday 11th February 2010, 03:50Dear MeI recently saw a book advertised in my local bookshop called Dear Me. The idea behind the book was to invite the great and the good to write a letter to themselves when they were 16 years old. I scanned a few of the pages and the letters ranged from thoughtful, reflective and serious to woeful, funny and outrageous. It made me think it was a good concept and so I have decided to pen myself a letter when I was unemployed;
Dear Me,View Complete Post Tuesday 10th November 2009, 04:15Tom JonesLast month I had the chance to take my Mum to see Tom Jones sing in concert in Liverpool. I know my Mum had always liked Tom Jones from when I was a child and although (to my knowledge) she had never thrown her underwear on stage she had raved about his live performance. So, through duty, I booked two tickets to see this 69-year-old singer ply his trade live at the Liverpool Echo Stadium.
As we drove to the stadium I wondered to myself if we might find we were..View Complete Post Thursday 17th September 2009, 15:21Just doing his job...... Just doing his job
This summer I was able to take a holiday with my family. It was wonderful, just to be able to spend time together is always a real treat for us because I spend so much time away from home. The sunshine, buckets and spades are great but the real value is just to be with each other and catch up on all the little things that get lost in the chaos of Dad coming and going all the time. View Complete Post Tuesday 1st September 2009, 08:55Proud PeopleIt seems that almost every day there is more news of job losses. The TV and the newspapers babbling away about 350, 600, 230, 3,000 more job losses. And sadly like the news of the famine in Africa 25 years ago, which led to the Live Aid concerts, you can sense the weariness of the presenter and the listener as they make yet more redundancy announcements. I remember Bob Geldolf talking about “compassion fatigue” and thinking it would be mad if these even..View Complete Post Wednesday 15th July 2009, 14:05 Why we should look elsewhere for solutionsDuring my lifetime I have seen tragedies in the UK and around the world. Some were natural disasters and some were the consequence of human error or malpractice. All impacted most on the lives of those communities least able to able to protect or defend themselves. Loss of life, loss of financial security, loss of status and loss of freedom were just some of the impacts felt by the vulnerable communities and those vulnerable in all of our communities.
Som..View Complete Post Sunday 12th July 2009, 17:52Every Day Heroes Every Day Heroes
My daughter is in year 10 at school and as part of her studies she needed to undertake a two week work placement. I could think of no better place to gain an insight into the world of work than A4e. So a few weeks ago She had the chance to work alongside our front line staff in our Warrington office.
Brent the manag..View Complete Post Saturday 2nd May 2009, 00:08A land of possibilitiesEveryday at A4e we are trying to find new ways of Improving Peoples Lives. Everyday we look at different models, different clients, different places where we can bring our energy and passion to help a person, a family or a community. Some of the heroes in A4e for me are the people who take our service and vision to a whole new place, Sally with young people, Jon and Andy with Financial Inclusion, Liton with Legal Services, Andrew and Kate with our services to people who have been on long term Incapacity Benefit and David working in Prisons. Taking the vi..View Complete Post Friday 1st May 2009, 23:32I am sorryOver the last few weeks we have had feedback from some of our clients that our service has missed the mark. Some of our clients have felt we have not lived up to the Improving Peoples Lives values we set ourselves. Some of the feedback has been direct to our staff and the company but more disappointing is that some of our clients have felt unable to approach us directly about concerns they have regarding our service. To let customers down is bad enough but to have our clients feeling they could not approach us..View Complete Post Thursday 16th April 2009, 22:33Susan Boyle
I hope you had the chance to catch the new series of Britain’s Got Talent, which started this weekend. I missed it but was able to catch the amazing performance of Susan Boyle on You Tube.
As she sat in the waiting room she talked with the p..View Complete Post Thursday 9th April 2009, 18:01Slumdog Millionaire Recently I managed to catch a viewing of Slumdog Millionaire. It is a brilliant film, haunting and filled with real life insights from the world of the slums in Mumbai. The story of a Mumbai teen who grew u..View Complete Post Tuesday 7th April 2009, 20:32HopeI have spent this week meeting unemployed people, employers and government officials who are looking for creative and innovative solution to growing the economy and creating wealth and sustainable employment. Interestingly there was no talk of recession, no talk of credit crunch, no blame for invisible politicians; no this week has been full of people talking of hope. They talk of hope that their time has come, hope that that can see the corner turning and finally daylight at the end of the tunnel.
Unemployed people have explained the hopes they have to work, to make a contribution .. View Complete Post Tuesday 31st March 2009, 17:03South Africa Social Enterprise of the YearI had the honour to attend the Nelson Mandela Promise of Leadership conference in Johannesburg this week. It was an amazing event with inputs from leading figures from around the world. The Promise of Leadership conference wanted to give the leaders of South Africa the opportunity to focus on the leadership that can flow from Mandela’s legacy to take South Africa into the future. What have we learnt? What can we take forward? What the seeds that we can plant now to grow leadership trees of the future?
For me there were four key issues from the conference.
• The voice of the young people..View Complete Post Tuesday 17th March 2009, 21:07Recession Steals Children’s HeroesThere are, I believe some basic rules in life. Children like sweets and Disney films. Football teams should always win home games. Only grandmas like the brown meat on a turkey leg at Christmas, and top of my list is that children need and deserve heroes/heroines.
Every child needs a hero to look up to and that hero should be mum and/or dad. It’s not much to ask, being a child can be a lonely and vulnerable place to be. Yes there are lots of good things out there for children these days but without a hero it can seem like a very lonely and fearsome world. That’s why children have .. View Complete Post Wednesday 7th January 2009, 12:40My Dad's Tobacco Tin and the Credit CrunchMy Dad’s tobacco tin and the credit crunch
Many years ago when I was about 10 years old, all my friends had bikes. They all had the best 10 gear racers you could buy. Actually they didn’t but it just felt that they did if you were 10 years old. I suppose in reality one or two of my friends had a sporty bike and the rest of us had hand me downs, cherished hand me downs but still hand me downs.
After lots of pressure and many nudges the day came when my dad took me out one day to buy a new bike. It wasn’t a new, new bike but it would be new to m.. View Complete Post Tuesday 9th December 2008, 01:14The lesson of the dummiesI have the pleasure of being the chair of governors at the school my children attend. It is a great privilege to be able to support the staff and leadership team as they ensure these children get the very best start in life. This weekend was the school Christmas Fair and Father Christmas was our most important guest. We were thrilled he was able to spare a few hours to meet the children and learn what they would like for Christmas and whether they had been good boys and girls for the last year. I had the honour to help Father Christmas in some of his tasks as he had so many children to meet. <..View Complete Post Thursday 20th November 2008, 03:18Oh how we laughed...........These are tough times. And I don’t believe the people who say it will all be ok, we can carry on as we always have done. Or the change affects those over there, not me. We are entering a period of significant change. And it will be bumpy. What can we learn from the past;
“But we have always done it this way” said the captain as his ship went down.
The paraffin lamp poked fun at the gas fitters digging up the road, making all that mess for nothing.
How we laughed at Walt when he talked of a whole new world of animation, we guessed he had bee..View Complete Post |
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