Our new Zazzle online shop is now live (yay!) and we’d be so grateful if you’d check it out.

Our new Shop For Good aims to promote a healthy lifestyle by selling products that remind us all to live healthily. Our shop also helps us to continue to do good in our community with all money raised going towards our public health projects. In our shop you can pick up badges, key rings, t-shirts, mugs and tote bags; more products will be added regularly and we’ll keep you updated on any new products. You can visit our shop here and below are a few of our products:

Our store is international, so our products are available to purchase from many countries as shown below.  Please click on the image below to find out more.

Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated.

 

We are delighted to announce that we are now a member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, an organisation that we admired from afar when we were based in the UK.

The Healthy Caribbean Coalition is a civil society alliance established to combat non-communicable diseases, their associated risk factors and conditions. In the Caribbean the four main non-communicable diseases are diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory diseases and their four main common risk factors are smoking tobacco, high alcohol consumption, an unhealthy diet and being physically inactive. These are the issues that the HCC are tackling in the region.  Additionally, the Caribbean has the highest mortality rate in the Americas from NCDs in the Americas causing three out of every four deaths, this is cause for concern and the HCC is working tirelessly to address this through prevention, early detection and influencing government policy.

We’re delighted to have become a member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition and look forward to working with the HCC and its member organisations to tackle NCDs in the Caribbean.

For more information on the Health Caribbean Coalition you can visit their website here

We were absolutely delighted to be featured in the Secret Birds new social media campaign, 31 Days of Business Ideas. This campaign aims to inspire young entrepreneurs to start their business journey by giving them a wide range of ideas to learn from. The variety of businesses featured highlights the vast possibilities that are out there and underscores the importance of identifying a need and developing solutions to address that need.

Lake Health and Wellbeing (formerly The Lake Foundation) is featured on day 22 of this campaign providing up and coming business owners with the idea that challenges around health and well-being can be developed into business opportunities. We do stress that delving into this field should be done for the right reasons; to help society and not solely for personal gain as this is a field that significantly affects people’s lives and you need to have empathy and a genuine interest in people to be truly successful.

Secret Birds aims to help women in the prestart-up and start-up phase build their businesses through connecting, collaborating and growing multi-faceted memberships and to teach girls in disadvantaged communities entrepreneurial skills through Nestling Pop Ups.  They aim to build a global community with no limitations or boundaries and their mantra is to share your secrets and share your success; sharing is one of their key values and underpins everything they do.

We would like to say a big thank you to Secret Birds for featuring us in this campaign. To find out about the other businesses featured in this campaign visit the Secret Birds’ Twitter or Facebook pages and GrenStart’s Facebook page

You can also find out more about Secret Birds on their website here

We are so happy to say that our founder, Abi Begho, is featured this month on the Secrets Birds entrepreneurship platform as a Rare Bird.

Secret Birds is an emerging market entrepreneurship community that empowers, encourages and supports women in the pre-start-up and start-up phases of their businesses, and they  teach girls aged 8-13 in disadvantaged communities entrepreneurial skills.

Secret Birds has also developed the concept of Rare Birds who are women who inspire through entrepreneurship. They define a Rare Bird as “an ordinary woman who is achieving extraordinary things as an entrepreneur. Rare Birds have mastered the art of flight!” Every month a woman in business is featured on the Secret Bird platform and March 2017 is the month for our founder Abi Begho.

In her feature, Abi Begho discusses why she set up The Lake Foundation, some of the challenges she has faced along the way, how she has overcome these and provides some advice for others wanting to start their own business. You can read Abi’s interview with Secret Birds here.

Secrete Birds is doing great work to support women in business and they will be launching a new initiative called ‘Connect. Collaborate. Grow.’ this year. This initiative will provide a mixture of activities which will focus on both the technical and non-technical aspects of starting a business.

We would like to say a big thank you to Secrete Birds for featuring Abi Begho this month and wish them every success with all the great work they are doing.

 

 

The Lake Foundation is delighted to announce that we have received a grant from Sport England, an organisation committed to helping people and their communities create sporting habits for life.  

This grant will support the full cost of running our new cycling club for a year which aims to encourage people in our local community to get more active. The club will be open to everyone but will focus on encouraging more African Caribbean people and women to cycle.

We are very grateful to Sport England for supporting us and believing in our project and look forward to our club members not only getting some great exercise but discovering the beauty of South London as we cycle through the lovely green spaces of Croydon and the surrounding area.

Our cycling club begins on Saturday 13^th February  at 10am, for more information please email events@thelakefoundation.com or keep an eye on our website.

 

This week The Lake Foundation became a member of the Croydon BME Forum and thus will be part of a growing alliance of black community groups working together to improve the lives of the BME community in Croydon.

The Croydon BME Forum is the umbrella organisation for Croydon’s BME voluntary and community sector. It engages with members of the community, building capacity and promoting equality and cohesion. It was established to give the BME community a voice ensuring key issues affecting residents of Croydon are raised with decision makers.

Specifically the forum works to:

• Ensure that they are involved in local policy and decision making; regeneration and neighbourhood renewal.
• Facilitate joint-working among BME communities to develop best practice and provide a unified BME voice within local strategic partnerships.
• Promote networking, collaboration and partnership between the BME voluntary sector and mainstream agencies building their organisational capacities.
• Engage with BME communities in all aspects of Croydon life.
• Encourage good race relations, community cohesion and equality of opportunity for all throughout Croydon.

We’re looking forward to being a part of this forum and are already very impressed with the first event we attended which was a Meet the Funder session with the Big Lottery Fund. This was a very informative session that discussed what makes a good grant application.
For more information on the Croydon BME Forum please visit their website here

The Lake Foundation is pleased to announce that we have a new corporate partner. Evolution Media Lab has selected The Lake Foundation as its charity of the year and will be donating 10% of its profit to our organisation.

We would like to say a big thank to Evolution Media Lab for their support and look forward to working with them in the coming year.