Great song by Adele, but in this case a simple title choice for sharing my experience, having just finished the first week being “on the other side". After 3 years of supporting social entrepreneurs, I’ve joined them in running businesses that are changing the world for the better … with Hope For The Community.

Artwork by Melissa Smith @FeelGoodMel #feelgoodcom

It was a week filled with mixed feelings, peaks and troughs as I am trying to find my rhythm. It is a shock to the system, going from working in an office, with a team and a large organisation with support services to working at home, alone with only radio for company. Of course this is outweighed by the benefits of casual wear, no commute, early school pick-up and never missing a parcel.

My path here started with discovering social enterprise in 2017 when I joined CU Social Enterprise CIC led by Keith Jeffrey. The three years with his wonderful team were filled with huge amounts of learning, meeting amazing and passionate people, travelling to far off lands to share our knowledge and to learn from others.

In 2017, I also firstly starting supporting Hope For The Community CIC, building on the fantastic work done by Vicky, Tina, Wendy and Dave, the founders , who themselves were affected by a long-term condition. I was advising on the business side and eventually lead on the Hope culture programme. No wall was safe from being turned into a Gratitude wall, earning me title of Angel of Gratitude. It was here that I re-discovered my love for culture and found passion for supporting community and workplace wellbeing.

Fast forward to 2019 and I was honoured to be selected out of 912 applicants to join 44 women in Los Angeles, USA on a Banco Santander sponsored W50 Program run by UCLA Anderson Executive Education to equip the next generation of global women leaders for service as board directors. I learned a lot and met amazing women running small business and large corporations, many of whom have since become friends and who continuously inspire me. After my return from LA, I felt like I wanted to do more and that maybe the way forward was with Hope.

It was then that I came across the Expert Impact and their Human Lending Library. I contacted them and within a week I was sitting opposite Karen Lynch, CEO of Belu. After few minutes explaining a bit about Hope and my thinking of joining, Karen asked me:

“What is stopping you now?”

And that was that.

So here I am, 2020, fresh start. Working in a sector built on strong values, in a company driven by empowering people to manage their health and wellbeing, grateful to all those who helped me to get here, ready to roll up my sleeves and do the work that needs to be done.

We are busy reviewing the business and making plans for enhancing our products and services. Our development team is working hard on the next version of our digital platform to be launched next month.

More news on that coming soon!

For now let’s start growing with Hope

Gabriela Matouskova, MBA joined our company on 6th January 2020 as Deputy Chief Executive Officer.

If you are interested in finding our how your organisation and your clients or staff could benefit from our Hope and Flourish programmes, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Hello from the other side