With 2023 being a year of healing, post breast-cancer, 2024 has been a year of doing things differently.
Time for volunteering: becoming a volunteer coach and Ambassador for Smart Works Scotland has given me a new purpose and is something I absolutely love. Smart Works empowers unemployed women back into the work force through confidence, coaching and clothes. We help women to rediscover their potential, through coaching, and to harness it for the world of work, giving them interview practice and an interview outfit in which to perform to their very best. When the role is secured, they visit us again to select a capsule wardrobe to help empower them as they take that next step.
Having actively coached, mentored and nurtured women in the workplace for the last 30 years it is humbling to help others onto the first rung of the ladder, and the very best feeling to receive the update email saying ‘she got the job’.
Next year we will help over 10,000 women across our 11 UK centres. Over 63% of women get a role within ONE month of meeting our team of 800 volunteers. Over 94% leave our sessions feeling more confident.
We are helping women back into the economy where, if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, we would add £250 billion each year. [Rose Review].
In short, Smart Works help women to find the missing spring in their step: transforming outlooks and changing lives.
Treasuring movement: I love to dance. A new weekly dance class has invigorated me, and made me laugh, on the very bleakest of days.
Tools of the trade [1]: A woolly jumper hoover [or de-bobbler]. I absolutely loathe bobbly jumpers and perpetually get in a tangle with manual devices which are meant to smooth, or remove, such bobbles [if you’ve seen Paddington experimenting with Sellotape, bear this in mind]. To be introduced to a wee electric de-bobbler has transformed my wardrobe – and that of everyone else in the family – and I have hoovered everyone’s woollens within an inch of daylight and declared war on new winter purchases saving money and the planet.
Tools of the trade [2]: Botivo. My absolute favourite non-alcoholic moment. Mix with soda water or tonic, throw in some lemon, and/or cucumber and you’re at the best party in town. For a special treat, mix with Royal Flush Sparking Tea or even Rooibos. Highly recommended and available on subscription and also now in Majestic. [No, I don’t have shares but I should, probably].
