The other day I was asked where I worked – Podnosh I replied….which resulted in a  quizzical look and the follow up, “Huh – What do you do?”

This isn’t a unique response – I get it often when I respond to the “Where do you work?” question.  Podnosh – it just  doesn’t resonate with people as much as If I worked for a big retailer and so people can’t make the usual assumptions that they would if I replied “Sainsburys”.

So what is Podnosh – what do we do?

The simple answer would be “We teach people to use the internet”. It’s accurate, technically – but it down playing everything we stand for – and everything else we do.

We work towards making things better.  We do this  by teaching people to use digital skills and online tools to improve things for themselves, be this by building relationships,  teaching better communication skills or improving access to services –  and we’ll work with anyone. Individuals, big structured organisations or small community groups, and anything in between – anywhere that our support will help make a difference.

We’ve worked alongside individual community volunteers, business managers and staff, cabinet members, councillors and MP’s – and we work even better when we can bring these people together in the same room to learn together and improve their togetherness.

In the past we’ve worked with local authorities to improve perceptions of safety in neighbourhoods, and to improve access to information that will shape cities, with schools to help with online bullying issues, brought people together to forge stronger communities and with councillors to open up the civic conversation to entire communities.

And that’s not even half of it – we’ve supported groups saving heritage building and Women’s groups reach a wider audience. We’ve worked with young people to make them feel part of a community and with scientists who just want to make the world a better place and so much more.

We’re also so very close to finishing developing an app that will really allow us to help people to tell the stories of how they are improving things for the people they work with too – the Podnosh Impact Assessment App. One of our clients Gateway have been using for a while – and we’ve already seen it make a difference in the way they are able to tell the stories of the people they support and the impact they have to their lives.

Making things better

Our company values are Think, Make A Difference and Give A Fuck and we work with those values in mind whatever we do.

Think: Can we help? Are these the right people to be working with? are we the right people for the job?

Make a difference: Will something be improved by our inclusion.

Give A Fuck: care – want to deliver the best we can – for ourselves and the people we work with.

So where do I work?  Podnosh.

What do I do? I think, I make a difference, I give a fuck! – and I’m really proud of that!