The Family Business Practice was established to support family business owners with opportunities to build connections, skills and confidence within a welcoming, friendly community and make a meaningful difference to their businesses.
Peter Roper, the founder of The Family Business Practice, believes that every family business owner needs support to start, build and grow their business. Being a business owner can be a lonely journey but for members who are part of the Family Business Practice, they feel like part of one big business family to make the right connections and stay with members through thick and thin.
Chris Williams, Advisor to the Trustees of the Buddy Bag Foundation said, “I was attending Peter’s network meetings on a regular basis, and of course, during Covid times, these meetings were online.
Because the network was meeting regularly online, there was no opportunity to meet people face to face so we thought we’d use the Buddy Bag Brigade as a way of bringing members physically together for a purpose.“
Around this time, Chris visited Michael Thomas at Worcester Racecourse for a meeting with them who generously donated their space to host the Buddy Bag pack for the network dedicating the whole ground floor and setting everything up.
Chris said, “The people in the network hadn’t met each other face to face so the team-building aspect of getting together and doing something with purpose lifted everybody.“
We really appreciated the toothbrush and shampoo and things you don’t think of grabbing when you need to get out quickly.
Chloe loves the bag, and the book and she’s wearing the pyjamas now, a really lovely thing to receive in a time when you need some cheering up.
It meant so much more than just the contents of the bag. Each bag brought a smile to my tear stained children’s faces, the bags are used for school for my big two and a changing bag for the smallest on a daily basis.
~ Mum and children, recipients of Buddy Bags
Dave James, volunteer, said: “My personal belief is that you can give money to charities but actually donating your time gives you so much more here [touches his heart] you actually see the difference that the work that the foundation the charity does as well.”
Gill Waidson, volunteer, said: “I think it’s such a brilliant idea. These children get taken out of their classrooms or their homes with absolutely nothing. If we can put these [Buddy Bags] together then why would you not do it? It’s a fantastic idea.”
Neil Lloyd, volunteer, said: “The reason I’m here today packing bags for the Buddy Bag Foundation is that you forget and don’t really appreciate that the children are a lot worse off than your own. So giving back a couple of hours of your time, to make a child’s life a lot better is a fantastic thing to do.”
Nicolas Lee, volunteer, said: “These kids need a little bit of help. We spent the morning packing the bags and the quality of what goes into the bags is just wonderful.”
We would like to thank everyone at the Family Business Practice who joined us for this Buddy Bag pack and for the Worcester Racecourse for hosting our event.
With thanks also to Dr. Dave Bird from small biz digital media for putting together the video for us.
If you would like to attend a Buddy Bag pack, you can visit our Facebook page here for details of all upcoming events.
