Children Unite is re-structuring even
though we don't have much of a structure in the first place?! Maybe it’s
re-thinking I mean? To be honest, it
feels more like soul searching to me.
Over the past two months I’ve been
developing a plan for this year’s activities – a plan that will ensure our
sustainability. Or do I mean viability
(?) as sometimes it’s felt like a survival plan. That’s when the soul searching
has come in. It’s forced me to ‘let go’
of the idea (dream) of Children Unite – the charity that started from nothing
and is now having such a big impact you wouldn’t believe it! It’s been hard but important to realise that,
actually, I’m an activist not a manager so setting up a big impressive
organisation that can co-ordinate large, multi-country projects is not
something I’d enjoy or be particularly good at.
I like the idea of being a light, flexible
and creative organisation that can take up opportunities. ‘Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ – I
don’t know where that phrase is from (a boxer I think) but I like to think if you're an activist based organisation you're like this. That you’re small
and flexible enough to move around but when you take action - people
notice! So, how does this fit with
Children Unite? Well, we’re scaling down
our ideas for big multi-country projects (as above) and instead we're setting up a ‘technical advice service’ that will offer our expertise on how to
work with child domestic workers to other charities. Ultimately, we want more child domestic
workers to receive the support they need and we know we can’t actually do this
ourselves, we’re much too small. But we
can encourage (advise) other organisations to work with this hidden group of
children.
Maybe I should change our strapline to ‘fly
like a butterfly, sting like a bee’?
Maybe
not, I might get a powerful right hook from an angry (famous) boxer!!
