Live Skype Chat: Phil Conway, Cool2Care
21.03.2010
As part of David Barrie’s opening briefing he linked up live via Skype with Phil Conway, founder of Cool2Care, a UK non-for-profit enterprise that supports families with disabled children.
Unusually in these circumstances, the technology worked first time, and Phil gave a moving an inspiring account of why he set up Cool2Care. He has a disabled son, aged 11, and wanted to do something to improve his life and give him access to experiences other able-bodied children have.
The organisation matches people who want to work with disabled children with suitable families, so disabled kids can make friends with new people and tired families can take a break from full-time caring. Vetted volunteers are offered training and take the disabled kids out and about to give them better life chances and experiences.
“I’m loving it”, says Phil, a former IT executive for IBM who admits he’s always been a “frustrated innovator”. “It’s tremendously invigorating. I’m having the time of my life. It’s all about enriching people’s lives.”
His service is fulfilling a real and pressing need, however. In the UK there are around 750,000 disabled children but only 1 in every 13 receives some form of state support. “There is a strong philanthropic tradition in this country but we’re woefully underfunded”, he says. “We’re only scratching the surface.”
Cool2Care has been going for three years, expanding throughout many London Boroughs and beyond. In Phil’s phrase: “It’s going gangbusters” – an English slang phrase for “really well”.
But what frustrations has he experienced along the way, asked David. “The most difficult thing is how to engender the same drive and passion in others that’s in me", he said. "I’m trying to run a fired-up, driven enterprise, and sometimes other people just don’t get that.”
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