Jo Finlay

I’ve been doing a bit of everything. There are various bits that need doing at the headquarters so I’ve just been moving round seeking opportunities.

Gift & Book Shop

The shop in all honesty needed a fair bit of attention. Rather than feeling assured you were in the shop, you felt as if you had walked in to some ones private office where all that greats you is a 3 legged wooden giraffe lay on the desk on his side.

Linnet, who runs the shop has understandably found it uninspiring sitting in there day in day out with no customers. She definitely needed some help and to see the shop with a fresh perspective.

As nothing was on show you kind of had to guess what the shop sold. I wanted to buy some phone credit but I was encouraged to buy from someone else who had a lockable draw as she didn’t feel safe holding money.

The shop has been waiting for the last year to move to town so everything’s been in boxes all this time. But who knows when that shop will move so we decided it was time to make do with what we had. Gemma and I set to work doing a stock take on every item in there. It turns out that the boxes contain thousands of brand new books

Well it all just seemed a bit back to front so you can imagine our surprise when one day we arrived to find that Linnet had completely rearranged the place, swept and cleaned and found a set of shelves .She was getting the stock out of the boxes and putting them on display. It was not only 100% better it was just so great that she did it off her own back (you worry a bit that when you turn your back some will just stop so it was so encouraging to see her motivated and taking responsibility and using her skills to make something better).

We have bought some paint and are having some shop fittings made so it should be looking good in no time.

Tailoring shop

I next went over to the Tailors, there’s three who work their, Elizabeth, Joshua and Eugine.They sit and make anything you want pretty much, but…… in between the customers they just sit!My plan was to make to get them to make some stuff out of scraps while they were waiting for c

ustomers and supply the shop with this. Three big sacks of scraps were produced and I was in my element!...We started with hair scrunchies, then pencil cases, then mens ties, womens scarves and lastly patchwork delights. Its been so exciting as they are so very skilled but, for some reason don’t mix their skills with their imagination and occupy their time creating new things. Anyway, the ties especially went down a storm and now the tailors supplie the shop with all kinds of goodies. Everything, we made came from scraps and with the time that they would just be sitting so, these items didn’t cost anything. 

(Time here is valued so differently.. I guess the labour costs are low but it seems odd to have people sitting around waiting when there is lots to be done)I can’t wait to hit the market and 

get more products on sale in the shop too.

Painting the gate

We (Gemma and I ) have spent the last two weeks painting the main gates at headquarters. The gates were in great need and I think were last done 13 years ago.

I've found this a little challenging as it hasn’t been a creative job, more a job for a mathematical mind (bring on Jo Hardy the architect who loves to measure!) A further challenge was the fact that it rains every afternoon, so it was just a morning job, working with sticky gloss in the blazing heat. 

Sometimes you would turn round to find three or four

 people had been standing watching you for the last three wonky letters that you had drawn… it was such a public job where any mistakes were seen by all. But, every single person that passed said something...‘thankyou for this good work’ ....‘nice to see girls doing mens work’ or ‘may god richly bless you for doing this’. Many of these people weren’t even from IcFEM but it was so nice that pretty much every person who walked through the gates took it on themselves to thank us wether it was anything to do with them or not. Between the three of us we got there, in the end, and its now complete.