“What on earth have I got myself into.” That was the look on the face of every single person in the room. It was the first day of the programme and we’d just recruited 20 Essex residents to dedicate a year of their lives to inventing new solutions to the social issues affecting them.
None had ever done anything like this before. People wanted to know - what would they actually be doing day to day?
My job was to paint a picture of the year ahead. I talked about the programme and how it would work and I remember finishing by saying, “it might seem improbable right now but in a year’s time you’ll be standing in front of hundreds of people from your community and the great and the good presenting impactful ideas you’ve created that are already making a difference.”
A hand shot up in the air. It was Karen, one of the Colchester residents working on the cost of living. For a fleeting moment I thought my spiel was working but as I turned to her I quickly realised I’d made a misstep. She looked at me, her eyes narrowed, and she said, “we are the great and the good.”
Of course she was right. Karen understood the cost of living profoundly because she’d lived it. She knew what it was like to manage on very little. She used to tell the story of dropping a pound, seeing it roll under a car and waiting patiently for that car to move because she knew how much that coin mattered. “And if I never eat curried spinach again”, she used to say, “I will forever be rich.”
Karen’s insight - and that of her local team which included her daughter Jessica - was that those who have the least money are often the best budgeters. And they knew that because that had been them. As they worked to invent their solution, the team thought - what if people like us who have managed with very little could support those in our communities who now find themselves in a difficult financial position as a result of the cost of living?
That insight became Trusted, an innovative peer to peer money confidence programme. Over six weeks a supportive community of local people would learn about different aspects of money confidence with local agencies in the room, not as experts but as guests of the community. It was so simple but incredibly was the first approach of its kind in the UK.
The team piloted Trusted on the programme and its impact blew them away. In the space of just six weeks the ten pilot participants collectively saved nearly £45,000. Trusted went on to secure funding and spin out as its own public-led organisation with Karen and her daughter Jessica at the helm. They’ve run a number of programmes since, all with similar results.
What I love about Trusted and all the ideas that came out of the programme – all of which became new public-led organisations – is that they’re the sort of ideas that could only have been created in this grassroots way.
They’re the sorts of solutions that could only have been invented by the people who had lived these issues themselves – the great and the good.
Want to empower those facing social issues to invent the solutions they need? Get in touch to work with us!
