Making a Start!

Masikati! Masikwerasei? Good afternoon! How's your day been?

First off, thanks to Dawn at iCreate in Swansea for giving me the idea to start blogging about 4Cyfeiriad Cymru (4CC)!! And thanks to The Swansea Foundation - Rhid n Ian - for all your superb support!!! Top guys! I've just come from a presentation event to The Swansea Foundation talking about 4CC's ambitions and ideas; the main reason to bring it to Foundation members is we can really offer an exciting opportunity in CSR using micro-loans and also we figured that lots of new ideas would and will be generated through the members of the Foundation. The meeting was great and really useful to me and hopefully to attendees... a small but enthusiastic crew! Dawn said - make a blog!!!! Ok!!! Ever obedient to new ideas!!! Let's give it a go....

Where to start.... 4CC is a new venture aimed at poverty alleviation in Wales and Zimbabwe and we've got loads of cracking ideas how to make a difference in both countries. In a nutshell:

micro-finance opportunities for SME's to make small loans to wanna-be entrepreneurs both in Wales and Zimbabwe, training events on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), community engagement fundraisers - ZimRock - will do a special blog on ZimRock later I reckon.....

Big vision - how to make it happen??? Well, it's an inclusive work in progress really and the more input and ideas we have the better.

At the moment, there are 4 of us on the team - me....general gad-abouter raising the profile here, Liz, our treasurer and kicker-of-my-backside when I need it (yes! Those of you who know me might find that hard to believe but even I need the KUB from time to time!), Jo, our eyes and ears of the people in Gwent and then the fantastic and brilliant Brenda Sevenzo, our woman in Zimbabwe!!!!

Last Autumn, we applied to Gold Star Communities Fund and got money for an exchange visit to further develop our project ideas and do some ground work with the people in Mazowe (where I was stopping) to find out what if anything we could do to help - how we could help - but importantly for me, how we could work together to create sustainable incomes and livelihoods for people in both countries.....starting small!!! which is of course beautiful!

The trip was a great success....I will do a blog about that later!!! Just want this first one to be general overview... and i guess although i'm not sure how these things work yet, if anyone has specific questions for me or Brenda, then you can ask via the blog??? (Dawn is that right??)

We got loads of ideas to take forward and 4CC was greeted with great enthusiasm..... our only disappointment to date is that the British Embassy refused Brenda's visa so she is unable to visit us here in Wales at the moment ..... anyone with any expertise or connections here please get in touch to help us!!! Gutting....

Right now we are working to get charitable status and have the fabulous Amanda Newman from GAVO helping us to put in various funding applications to get this show on the road.. .we need some basic start up funds to help with the processes and admin etc to get the micro-finance off the ground.... Also, there are various other funding streams we are exploring - signposted to us by Nicola and Jenny at the Wales4Africa team in WAG (Welsh Assembly Govt) and Ed and Craig at Gold Stars.....mmmmm

So, given this is a Making a Start! blog i'm gonna sign off right now and see what happens next!!!!

Please get involved - please invite your friends, colleagues, customers to get involved!!

the more the merrier!

Claire