By Today was a team day. We met up with Andrew Duncan of New Level Results, who we have worked with since the planning stages of our row project (see Nat’s earlier blog) The Best Year Yet programme was instrumental in helping us set clear guidelines and goals to get us to the start line and then to use on the water. Today was an opportunity to reflect on what has gone before and to set up a new team plan for the next stage of our row as we continue with our fundraising and sharing our story.
Lizanne joined us by Skype from Cape Town and we were kindly hosted at the offices of Breast Cancer Care. We started by taking the time to do a debrief about the team’s time on the water. We listed our individual and team accomplishments and disappointments and what lessons we can learn from them going forward. In the afternoon, we made a start on our plan for the post-row world. What do we want to achieve in the the next six months? What is our plan for continuing to raise money for our charities, Walking With The Wounded and Breast Cancer care? Who will be responsible for what? How are we going to balance this with our personal and work lives? It was a great brainstorming session and we now have a clear Best Year Yet plan to work to going forward.
At lunchtime, we were able to share our story with the staff and volunteers of Breast Cancer Care. We were joined by the team in the London office and conferenced in the teams in Sheffield and Glasgow. We ran them through the highs and lows of life on the ocean, shared some photos, and answered their questions about our journey. Breast Cancer Care have been so supportive of our journey and it was wonderful to meet so many of the wider team face to face.
All in all, it was another busy, but productive day and, as always, great to have the whole team together (using the power of the Internet).
Love the picture with Lizanne on skype. No let up for you grafters. What marvellous individuals you are, and an incredible team. I am taking a quick glance at emails etc, before heading off to Manchester airport for a couple of weeks sun sea (Pacific Ocean) and sand in Mexico (Bueno Vallarta). Adios! XX
What a great picture with that burst of South African sunshine shining out of the centre.
Clearly you are all going to be very busy now that you have comitted to the third dimension of your lives, namely fund raising and sharing your story. Balancing that with your individual working and personal lives I suspect is going to be a challenge.
However, you have proved that you can beat any odds so I smell success here.
Good luck – maybe get a chance to meet you one day.
Wonderful to see the 6 Coxless Crew members in the same photo. Full of admiration for your continuing dedication to the cause although how you do that, and climb back into the world of working for a living and building back a social life, I have no idea.
I imagine the end objective is to raise the 250K. After that you all get your lives back. Have you thought of using your unique Pacific journey photos to make themed mementos to sell, such as calendars, mugs, T-shirts. You won’t want to invest money in product but some enterprising supporter might take the risk. We have had glimpses of the photos and some are excellent, the sunsets, the underwater shots. There has to be profit to be made from them. Just sowing some seeds!!
Send some photos to Laura’s school and those kids will come up with something entrepreneurial if they haven’t already!
Hope you will be talking at next January’s Adventure Travel Show!!
Great to see all six of you together but can’t wait to see the photo of you all standing together. Interesting to hear about the continuing plans; yet more hard work for you all whilst returning to work, job hunting etc. good luck with it all.