Dear Friends and Readers, I’m delighted to announce that I’m joining the awesome vInspired

team upon my return to London later this month.  For anyone not familiar with vInspired, it’s a leading UK charity founded back in 2006 with a mission to provide young people aged 18-25 with an opportunity to do good things by matching them & their skills to suitable volunteering opportunities.

I’m joining as first CEO of vInspired’s brand new Task Squad service.  Task Squad’s core aim is to help young people from the vInspired community with proven experience of volunteering to take the next steps into paid employment.  There will be three of us in the initial start-up team including Sam Sparrow & Dan Bond although the rest of vInspired will be there to help and support us.

Our online platform is built & operational already and our first few anchor companies (Which?, Sidekick Studios and a few others) have already started posting up some vacancies.  You can take a look here www.tasksquadhq.com  The basic premise is that companies often need an affordable extra pair of hands for a short term at short notice and with the minimum of fuss.  We have a ready supply of young people within the vInspired community who are eager to work.  Our young people are able to respond to requests quickly, they want to earn some money and they want to get some work experience for their cv.  Everyone wins.

My initial focus as CEO is going to be to start building Task Squad’s profile and to get loads more companies and organisations using Task Squad & posting up tasks.  All of you can expect a call from me…

The project ticks a lot of my boxes personally.  It makes use of technology for good, it involves young people & it’s an early stage startup – so I’ve been very lucky to be in the right place at the right time and I’m excited about getting started & getting some momentum going along with Sam and Dan.  I know that many of you will know about vInspired already and will want to support us with our new initiative.  For organisations who don’t have any short term resourcing needs, we’re working out a model whereby you can donate to Task Squad from your CSR budget & we’ll use your money to fund a young person to do some work at a charity instead.

Wish us luck & please send me your comments & ideas.