How did we start?
On March 11th 2020, we set up a Facebook group called 'Anti-viral work for freelancers and small businesses' in response to the severe impact of COVID-19 on the self-employed.
We grew to over 1300 members, across sectors and locations, in just 1 day. We are still growing every minute.
Members are coming together as a community to share their current challenges and to share advice, support and resources. It is clear that we are not alone - unfortunately the growing crisis of COVID-19 is causing individuals and businesses to lose huge amounts of work and feel the biggest threat to their businesses and livelihoods in a generation.
Where are we going?
It is also clear that we are not set up as a society to support the self-employed when they are faced with situations outside of their control. We want to help, to come together and to mobilise. We feel we can help share the voices of the self-employed community and rally for change.
What do we need?
First, we need a brand and a website. We want to pay a designer, perhaps a digital creative team if we can, to help us create digital content and a strong online presence for our project.
What information do we want to share? What structure are we going to take?
We want to pool the information, guidance, resources and advice being shared by our members in an easy to use online space. We are also looking at the possibility of a jobs board and a skills share section.
We are working this out organically as we go but we are a team of project and event managers, company founders and creatives with decades of experience between us. We have full confidence we can create a strong support presence if we act fast.
We have bought the necessary URL's. We have a brand name and a mission. Once we have an online presence, we can start to grow and to find out what's possible for our brilliant, spirited, skilled community.
The self-employed community are highly skilled, talented, created and entrepreneurial - help us to beat this, together!