This Sunday my friend Sarah Dodds would have been 40 years old.  If I stop for a moment I can hear her in full paradoxical throttle, railing against the aging process while reveling in the instantly acquired sagely wisdom of making it past two score years….

Unfortunately Sarah is no longer with us and we don’t get exposed to the wonder of her abilities to hold contradictory world views in the same opinion.

We do, however, get to continue wonderful and contradictory conversations via the memorial fund that has been set up in her memory.  It is no conciliation for losing Sarah, but I guess it keeps me (and quite a few other people) off the streets…

The Sarah Dodds Enterprise Accelerator (SDEA) matches early stage social initiatives with high-quality MBA graduate calibre individuals for internships that focus on capacity-building and investment readiness.  The purpose of these matchings are two-fold:

• To prepare the social initiative for scale – moving them towards sustainability, success and greatly increased impact, and
• To inspire and educate MBAs, influencing their career choices and further ‘mainstreaming’ social and environmental change into the MBA process.

This year we have two fantastic interns, Geetika and Katie, and two great projects Bootstrap and MyBnk.  Geetika is working with Bootstrap (who provide managed workspace in Dalston) to devise a business plan to, literally, lift the roof off their building and create a new floor of workspace for charities and cultural industries businesses as well as a roof park).  Katie is working with MyBnk (who provide financial literacy training for young people) to develop their strategy for expansion, initially across the UK and then further afield.

So it’s developing into an action packed Summer for all of us involved with Sarah’s Fund.  It’s a lot of fun and sometimes pretty challenging content.  We are running dinners for all those involved and interested every Monday evening throughout the Summer, so please get in touch if you’d like to come along and join us.

It’s bitter-sweet that the result of losing a great friend results in so many good things happening and connections being made.  And I know that no-one involved will take offense when i say I’d rather have my friend back than be running this crazy-arsed internship scheme…!