Some people here wanted clarification on certain things and transparency so I’ve detailed the background to the one a year campaign and given details of the people and businesses mentioned on this thread previously. I’ve prepared this response with the help of Gous, who has provided info on what he’s doing.
The Background to this business idea.
Gous is a close friend of mine, we’ve known each other for about 3 years. He is a web developer by profession and is currently working on a charity project with Steve Sims, the former British boxing champion.
I may have denied knowing his home address but that was to protect it from prying eyes. It’s not fair to have someone’s residential address posted on the internet. Even though it may have been a previous address. Also, because it was nobody’s business who he is as it’s not relevant.
But as some people raised the issue I’ll clarify who he is and the relationship to this project.
His recent past has been focused in the area of Ethical and Charitable enterprises, trying to get people to choose green and fair trade, and now charitable businesses.
As he hasn’t the time to get himself involved in everything, he has persuaded some of his friends and contacts to take up the fight.
His friends, whom he met whilst partnering with a bluetooth media company, Phil and Jon, are involved in the ethical movement.
http://www.myspace.com/ethicalmovement. It has over 4,200 members and you can contact Phil to verify Gous’s part. If you also check the whois info on ethicalmovement.com it will show Gous’s address. I don’t know Phil or Jon personally.
The one a year campaign, was originally conceived by Gous to get people to make at least one green/fair trade purchase a year.
But as Gous, left to join Steve in forming Sport Against Cancer, the One A Year Campaign idea came to a holt. Phil and Jon are continuing to do their good work by themselves through myspace.
All about Gous
I’ve known Gous for over 3 years, he’s not a saint, far from it, but he’s been trying to do something good with his life.
He is very good at developing great business ideas, especially, one’s that benefit society in some way.
At the height of the property boom, he came up with a way to help up to 2 million pensioners to get an extra £50 a week from the property market. He had seen how the pensioners had been struggling and wanted to create a viable business that helped them.
But as the market was rising he had second thoughts, the service could have made him potentially many millions, and had serious business people interested being part of it. However, he had the foresight to realise there would be a property crash, and if the service had been launched when the market crashed it would affect large numbers of the most vulnerable people, and so decided not to go ahead with it.
This business would work best in a stable market, so has great potential for a launch in the future.
Currently, he is devoting most of his time to get the cancer prevention sporting charity under way.
About Sport Against Cancer
This idea came about when Steve one day came to Gous wanting him to create a profile website to let people know his boxing achievements.
Steve is very knowledgeable of food nutrition and the things to eat to help minimise the risks of developing cancer.
He is also very passionate about getting this knowledge across to others to try and convert them to his way of thinking to help reduce their risks of developing this disease.
Gous realised, rather than just having a simple profile website Steve could use his local fame to educate others.
The idea evolved, and the focus changed from just food nutrition to sporting activity, by getting people to exercise 30 minutes a day, the chances of developing cancers could be reduced by up to 50%. It made sense as Steve is also a sporting champion with many contacts in the world of sport who could help in promoting the charity.
Sport Against Cancer was mistakenly registered as Limited by Shares, also there was an American “Sports Against Cancer” charity, so the name has now been changed to Sport Preventing Cancer, which is limited by guarantee i.e. Not-For-Profit.
The objectives of Sport Preventing Cancer is to convey their message through the media so more people start exercising. Funding for this will come mainly from the world of sport in the future; it’s an opportunity for sport to give back to its fans by getting them to look after their own health.
It also plans to hold FREE local activities in every town and city where it will have representatives. So, people can just turn up and participate without costing them anything. Not everyone can afford to go to gyms on a regular basis so this will give them the opportunity to keep fit and minimise their risks to developing cancer.
SAC Enterprise was created to provide business to business services, some quite unique, to help finance the FREE local activities, as it would give most of its profits to Sport Preventing Cancer.
It would be difficult to rely simply on donations from the public to run these activities.
All about me
I’m Siobhan Jones, as you all should know by now. I live in Newport in South Wales with my sister, mother and pet cat.
I haven’t been very happy with most of the jobs I’ve had in recent years, so have done a few courses.
It was through one of these courses I came to volunteer for PDSA in Newport. If you want verification of this please contact Maureen (Mo), she is the nice lady with the white hair.
Gous has been encouraging me to start my own business for over a year now. He said if I want to get anywhere in life I needed to have my own business. It’s difficult to afford a property these days with the prices the way they are, but I want to be independent, need my own space.
But I lack self confidence, didn’t know what to expect as I have very little knowledge of the way the world of business works.
Gous had reassured me there are people to advise and guide me and I should give it a chance.
He watched a Working Lunch episode where the representative for CAF had said that charities have lost 30% of their income because of the recession and thought there must be a solution.
That’s why the One A Year Campaign was reprised. It was originally conceived to increase ethical and fair trade business, but now changed the focus to helping charities.
The solution is great, it attracts donations to charities from the extra trade businesses get, and it doesn’t cost the consumers anything extra for choosing these businesses rather than a non-donating business.
Gous had asked me to work on the mechanics of the idea and do some research, get help from the business forum and test it to see the level of interest to assess its viability.
This was going to be a good learning experience for me as I would be around professional and knowledgeable people.
We went to have a meeting with one of his friends (Yakub) who runs an estate agency and is also a mortgage broker. He has the gift of the gab, so would be great for the PR campaign.
He agreed to help promote the service once it’s ready. We hadn’t discussed it at the time but I think he would also let the business trade from his premises as it has plenty of space if I ask.
So I did some research, and learnt a bit from the charity commission website, and from all that added the content to the website, with the help of Gous.
I emailed CAF to get them to agree a deal where their members would benefit from the donations.
They replied with an email saying they would reply within 10 days but haven’t heard back from them
I’ve also emailed some large charities about commercial partnering but haven’t had replies. I don’t think they take emails seriously unless you’re a big company or it just gets lost in the system.
Whatever the reason, it hasn’t been effective. I think the only way to get their interest is by doing the press campaign and then calling them by phone.
So, I introduced myself to the forum explaining the idea and started to get businesses who were interested on board on a free offer to get a sizable number to start off with.
They would also give me feedback on the service, ways it can be improved etc.
The plan was after I had 30 businesses and made any necessary changes, I would send press releases, arrange radio interviews etc. to attract other businesses and charities to participate.
The Forum Nightmare
I came to this forum thinking people would love the idea and give some constructive criticism on ways to improve it. Most did love it, but there were some issues that needed to be resolved.
Normally, I would spend about an hour or so a day reading the posts, which I don’t think was enough to go through all the messages properly.
I underestimated the popularity of the thread, so perhaps skipped through some from certain people as there was too much to read or because some of their previous replies weren’t constructive.
But having read through the thread properly for the first time a few days ago I can see that there were some valid points made and questions asked.
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