- A blog from Jacob Hill, Offploy's Managing Director.
Later this month I will be sharing my journey from arrest to rehabilitation and how I came to form Offploy Community Interest Company at a meeting of the Academy for Social Justice Commissioning in Leeds. The Academy works closely with the MoJ and identifies, supports and promotes excellence in social justice commissioning. It has over 3500 members from the public, private, academic and voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors.
Normally, I wouldn’t write a blog about speaking at the event, it is something I have the privilege of doing often, in fact one of my most popular talks was recently at the Conservative Party Conference.
However, the reason I am writing about this talk, the reason it is so special is because instead of the usual 30-45 minutes I will be presenting for up to an hour and a half with my friends, colleagues, commissioners and candidates in the audience. It is often easier talking to an anonymous 1000 person audience than it is an intimate 50 person audience, especially when you know many of them!
I’m going to use the talk as an opportunity to truly reflect on the journey. I am going to share ‘warts and all’ the multitude of challenges that come with starting without a track record, candidates who don’t want to be helped, colleagues who prove challenging and competitors who purposely make life difficult for our service to get off the ground.
I am also going to unashamedly share the positive impact our organisation has had, how we’ve seen rapid growth over the last 12 months and how we intend to keep this momentum up for the coming years.
I am truly excited to share the real story about starting a socially focused service in the public sector and I hope to make quite a special announcement for Offploy at the event.
However, the key part of the talk will be the story of one candidate we have helped to secure employment. Because, what is the point of all of this if not to support people with criminal convictions into meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment? We will invite the candidate up to share their journey and be asked a few questions from the audience.
I believe in what we do, as do our team who will be there on the evening also answering questions in the informal breakout session.
You must to be a ASJC member to attend this free event, you can do that here in 2 minutes.
You can then register to attend the event here.
If you do decide to come please send me or Offploy a tweet, @JacobROHill or @Offploy and we will look out for you on the 30th January.
Event details:
30th January 2019
5pm to 7pm
Lecture Theatre CL113
Calverley Building
City Campus
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds
LS1 3HE