How we won funding to deliver WoW Wearable Tech Workshops
By Michelle Hua @MadeWithGlove
CEO, Debbie Edwards of FDisrupters, a start-up in Liverpool approached Women of Wearables to deliver our wearable tech workshop. The goal was to inspire 11 young girls aged 14-18 in her 14 week pilot program of workshops on confidence, self belief and tech skills.
As with most challenges start-ups face, Debbie was waiting for funding to enable us to deliver our workshops.
Our Wearable Tech Assistant, Rachael Yeung from Liverpool used her initiative and discovered a funding avenue through Awesome Liverpool.
Awesome Liverpool is a chapter of the Awesome Foundation. It is an ever-growing worldwide community devoted to forwarding the interest of awesome globally. Established in 2009 in Boston, the Foundation distributes $1000 grants to projects and creators.
In the UK, it is £500 and the money comes from 10 local Trustees who each put in £50 in a kitty for allocation each month.
There are 87 chapters in 20 countries world wide and disappointingly, there is only 1 chapter in the UK. But that's why I think it's fittingly called Awesome Liverpool.
After we secretly submitted an online form answering a series of questions about the brief on delivering a wearable tech workshop for FDisrupters and ensured that it fit the criteria of:
1. Solves a problem
2. Has a budget
3. Keeping it local and most importantly,
4. Bringing joy
we were shortlisted in the top 3 after 70 applicants had submitted!
We broke the good news to Debbie and invited her to come to our pitch in Liverpool and be on hand if there were any questions by the Trustees.
Rachael and I had some very tough competition and pitches to compete against and no amount of wearable tech light up glowing shoes, bags and bracelets could sway the Trustees to immediately pick us!
Anita, a psychologist brought her partner in crime, Murray the Owl who assists her in her solution based therapy to improve her patients’ mental health and well being by visiting hospitals, care homes and home visits. Murray also assisted her in her pitch and demanded a round of applause while doing a twirl and flapping his wings.
Drue developed a filtering system to create clean water through air precipitation for third world countries.
After giving our 5 minute pitches and 10 minutes of Q&A by the Trustees, 5 out of the 10 Trustees present deliberated and finally gave us the verdict. We had won but only by a glow stick!
The impact of the Awesome Liverpool funding means that we can deliver our WoW wearable tech workshop to 11 girls and be a part of FDisrupters' goal of teaching girls confidence, self belief and tech skills.
For more information on the Awesome Liverpool Fund and the impact of the Trustees' altruistic acts, find out more here.
If you would like to help Debbie and inspire 11 young girls in Liverpool, contact Debbie at Debbie@FDisrupters.com.
If you would like to learn more about our WoW Wearable Tech workshops, click here!