Coaching for Women CIC, founded by Alison Manning, was created to provide free coaching to women through running group coaching workshops and courses, with women from very diverse backgrounds.
Alison describes her principal goal, quite simply, as building confidence. Typically about 15 women take part over an 8-week period, meeting once a week. Since a modest beginning, initially funded by EF in 2018, Alison has gone on to reach some 600 women.
Recently a woman named Rahat wrote to Alison, describing her work as “life changing for women” and saying she had been “a hugely important part of my growth”. Rahat has just been appointed as a Justice of the Peace.
Gaining Credibility
In talking to Alison, I was especially interested to learn how she obtained the money needed to sustain her programmes after the ending of EF funding. There were two points she emphasised both to do with credibility:
The track record she had initially established enabled her to succeed in getting support from a Waltham Forest Borough Council keen to provide greater opportunities for women in their borough. Although the funding was quite small, this gave her, in turn, the right kind of credibility to apply and receive a much bigger grant from Greater London Authority (GLA), thus not only sustaining her work but expanding its reach, too.
Along similar lines, especially when applying to a public body, setting up a CIC (Community Interest Company), she said, was also an essential step in giving her legal status and a greater credibility.
No Fear
The title ‘But I Have No Fear’ is taken from what a participant wrote in a group session. Alison made it clear that the confidence women gain may lead, as it did with Rahat, to big changes in one’s life. It is, however, most of all about learning to value living one’s life for oneself in whatever way that may manifest, big or small.
Joy
It feels entirely fitting to end with a poem written this month by one of the women. It says so much and is entitled ‘Joy’.
Bloom. Life. Delicate. Precious.
Joy is fleeting. Joy is a moment. Joy is today.
A walk amongst the living.
A taste of the cold ice-cream in the mid-day heat.
A smile from a stranger, a nod, an acknowledgement of the living.
As the flower opens and shares with us its fragrance, the people share the warmth through the silent connection by living and moving.
Joy today was in the moments I allowed myself to live by walking side-by-side with others.
Joy today was me smiling beneath my niqab even as people may have been guessing why I was staring.
Joy today were all the moments I experienced, living.
Suraia Begum
