Hello, young man! What aquarobics can teach charities

The elderly woman in the bathing cap smiled sweetly as she waded slowly towards me. “Hello, young man! Would you like to join me and the girls for a cup of tea afterwards?” she asked. What led to this offer of tea with thirty women in my local sports centre? Well, it started with surgery to fix a longstanding knee injury. As part of my recovery, it became clear that exercising in water, where there is less impact and less weight going through the knee would be an excellent way to build up strength. So there I was in the aquarobics class. I went every week for a few months. It was quite a tough workout, and really did me some good. And yet I was always the only man there. “We had a man with us for a few weeks a few years back” I was told. And I was generally the only person there under about sixty years of age. Why was this the case? Surely I can’t have been the only man in Hertfordshire for whom this kind of exercise was beneficial? And why is this question relevant to charities? We need to find solutions that are right for us Somehow aquarobics is seen as something only elderly women do, even though it could do the rest of us a lot of good. And I would argue that charities are also too busy looking at what other organisations do. We offer pale imitations. But we should also be focusing on our own situation, and developing our work accordingly. The best innovation comes from within. Think internally as well externally We all do “SW