It’s not every day that Gok Wan lands on your lap but at the end of last week he did literally just that to me, springing into a team meeting to tell me that I’d won a place on Vodafone’s World of Difference programme.  

This means I’ll be spending March and April working full time for the James Hopkins Trust in Gloucester, a charity providing respite care for terminally ill and severely disabled children under the age of 5. I grew up in Gloucester and some of my closest friends have benefited from the charity’s services, so it’s hard for me to overstate how much of a privilege it is to get this opportunity.

I’ve worked in PR for over 10 years and I’ll be sharing this experience with the Trust and its volunteers during my placement. The purpose of my time there will be to equip the team with the skills, tools and process to maximise the impact of their activities over the next couple of years, which is vital to the Trust as it seeks to raise £250,000 on top of its regular funds to extend the premises to offer overnight respite care.

So, with the placement secured I, like the other 499 winners, am now starting to plan my time at the trust in more detail. The first thing I need to sort out is transport for the two months and I need to get my hands on a car for the daily drive from Newbury to Gloucester.

With a young family at home, staying over in Gloucester’s not an ideal prospect and being a one car family means I won’t be able to take the car away from my wife and kids for that long! A daily train journey is impractical because of the relative locations and costs, which means securing the loan of a car for that period is by far the best option.

Everyone reading this post can help:
-    If you have a car that you would be willing to loan to me during March and April, please let me know.
-    If you don’t have access to a spare car, someone you know might, so please share this update with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, email - whatever floats your boat!
-    If you have friends or contacts at a car dealer, rental or manufacturing firm that you think might be able to help, please send them a link to this post, or put them in touch with me. In exchange for the car, I’m offering my PR skills to generate local media coverage for any business that can help me to get on the road.

I’ll be posting to this blog regularly throughout the next couple of weeks and I hope to be able to bring good news on the car front and the role it can play in helping the James Hopkins Trust.

Cheers,
Dan.