An Early Burns Night

We went this evening to an early Burns Night celebration at Abbevilles restaurant in Clapham Common. It's a restaurant run by a charity that I (Annie) have been volunteering with, providing technical guidance on a project they're running.

First Step Trust (FST) is a great charity. In their own words:

"FST is an innovative charity with over 25 years experience of providing opportunities for people excluded from working life because of mental health conditions, learning disabilities, drug or alcohol and other disadvantages.

FST provides within the various social enterprises it runs, work experience, on the job training and salaried employment to some of the most vulnerable and socially excluded members of our community. A number of our salaried staff team have been recruited from the shop floor.

More than 95% of those we work with have been unemployed for one or more years, 50% up to 10 years and 17% have never worked at all."

The restaurant is run by the people the charity helps, and the food for Burns Night was plentiful and tasty. It was a thoroughly Scottish evening, with many of Burns' poems, whisky and bagpipe music. Fun was had by all, and money raised for the charity.

The work I'm doing with them is to help train more people who have issues with traditional training / testing mechanisms. Using technologies such as virtual or augmented reality, or a device such as Amazon's Alexa, the literacy bar for training is lowered. 

Ronnie, the charity's CEO, is a force for good - he has the ear of companies like Microsoft who are interested in helping. Not bad for a small charity, and a credit to him!