nicky & george - supertri 5 - can we help?
good morning nicky and george, (and everyone else).
thanks for becoming the 1251st and 1252nd people to subscribe to our bigmoose blog, made up of weekly randomness, and hopefully a little inspiration.
with an open rate of over 50% we are batting way above the average 21.33% newsletter open rate, so thank you for showing up weekly, and hopefully nicky and george stick around, but that’s my job right?
oh well, here goes, buckle up!
but before i start i just wanted to let you all know i did the recycling yesterday afternoon, so no interruptions this morning, plus i won’t freeze in this morning’s minus five cardiff conditions.
so, how did nicky and george come to subscribe to our blog?
so here’s the thing, this bigmoose journey, and probably life generally really is all about human connection.
and love.
so, back in 2011 when chloe and i started volunteering at the homeless soup kitchen, we would go once a month to the back of debenhams and hand out hot food and drinks to cardiff's homeless community, whatever the weather, and talk to people about their stories, and learn about how life had resulted them living rough, often losing family, jobs, houses, self esteem, and hope.
we found a young man called mark bustos on instagram, who cut homeless people in l.a.’s hair, and i asked him if we could copy his idea, which he encouraged us to do.
have good look at the picture above pre and post haircut, this man was life changing for me.
a fifteen minute haircut, and a conversation with two other humans that listened, and cared, gave him hope, and his eyes in the second photo are so much more alive.
this monthly experience was so humbling and we learnt so much about human beings, about mental health, about the devastation that alcohol and drugs can cause, and how our allegedly ‘civilised’ society can allow these vulnerable humans to slip through the system, ending up living on our city centre streets.
everyone has a story.
and month after month for over two years with chloe, tiffany, tania, and a throng of friends who had heard about what we were doing, they reached out to help, donating their time, their ideas, and their hearts.
we did warm clothing drives, supported by cotswold outdoor clothing, and peter alan estate agents, we had restaurant friends john and ceri cook, bring down piping hot shepherds pie and vegetables, and we had london based hotels donate almost a hundred duvets.
all amazing acts of kindness, but we needed to do more.
more to change the script.
so, inspired by the house of st baranabus, https://hosb.org.uk/ a london based charity we decided to set up bigmoose coffee co, and help people change their lives for the good.
so we changed this.
into this…
and helped people like curt, who we first met after he was signposted to us from another charity whilst sleeping in shelters for a number of years.
we trained curt, got him counselling to help with his mental health, and he is now more like a son to me than an ex employee, living and thriving in germany with his long term girlfriend and job.
our dream became a reality.
why am i telling you this?
well skip back to our monthly volunteering with the homeless community, and my great friend angie willmott recruited some of her friends to come and join us, and one, matt thomas, who i have mentioned here before, joined our throng of kind hearted folk monthly, handing out basic hot grub and drinks.
matt has stayed in my life since, always supporting every adventure i embark on, and this year pledged to raise £25,000 for project 1million, and you know what, he has raised just that, no messing around, twenty five large, a huge amount of money, and we are so grateful, but here’s the fun bit.
i’ve mentioned this in previous blogs how matt connected me to sophie, a friend of his in london, who in turn introduced me to stephen waddington, who booked me for my recent london talk, and how that talk, which has resulted in £6500 being donated to bigmoose, and has got nicky and george here with us today, and they have booked me to do a talk for them in february, where hopefully i can tell our bigmoose story to a new group of people who you never know, might join us on this journey.
as i mentioned, the power of human connection is really impactful for us in general, but for us as a charity is paramount, so if as you read this you can spend a minute to think of how you can possibly help by making a connection, we’d be really grateful, connections change lives.
as the light now streams into my office, as natures alarm clock, telling me to wrap things up, i’m disappointed, as i’ve run out of time to tell you about so much great stuff that’s been happening this last week, supeftri 5, which was a beautiful meze of humans all helping the team of disabled children successfully achieve triathlete status, swimming, running and cycling assisted by the kind hearted co inhabitants of this planet, and some flipping exciting stuff we have planned for 2023, but i’ll tell you more next week.
so, before i go, thank you to everyone of you who have signed up to donate monthly, your financial commitment means a lot to us, and helps us do the work we do, helping save lives, which hopefully gives you the same warm fuzzy feeling i get every day we help another person get through the tough times, and here is a link if you want to join our gang:
https://www.bigmoosecharity.co/donate-monthly
finally, if you or anybody you know, are struggling, especially at this challenging time of year, please contact me as we are here to help, at any time.
enjoy your week ahead, reflect on 2022, and end it strong, 15 days left.
blue skies,
jeff
numbers 290 referrals, 122 graduates, 1
