Its so easy to get pulled into everything that is ‘wrong’ with the world at the moment.  Health, social care and education systems that are under-funded and close to collapse, wars around the world, black and white thinking which polarises and separates people.  But the more attention that we give to these issues, the harder it gets to keep going. 

The joy of working with the organisations we work with is the passion of the people running them.  Social entrepreneurs seeing the issues and coming up with practical solutions; people leading small charities who are committed and so skilled in their work.  They help me to focus on the solutions, on a different way of doing things – on the way that things could potentially be. 

When we start working with organisations, we often begin with a ‘theory of change’ [Theory of change in ten steps – NPC (thinknpc.org)].  The starting place for this is to identify the problems you want to solve and to state the vision of the world you are working towards.  The vision is THE most important thing.  If you don’t know what you are aiming for, then how can you know if you are moving towards it.  Having a vision that you are passionate about and that everyone in your organisation is working towards can make such a difference.  It can help to pull everyone together, to give focus when things are hard day-to-day and to give those outside your organisation a really clear idea of what you are about.