One Year On: The Evolution of SIC.
SIC. has been through a few different evolutions, and like the Queen, we celebrate two birthdays. Our ‘official’ birthday is February 22nd, when we officially registered as a Community interest company and armed ourselves with a business plan. But July 3rd holds a special place in my heart as the day I first launched Sick In The City, the blog.
As a writer, and at the time a magazine Editor in Chief and Chief Operating Officer, with the looming summer of the pandemic underway, I bought the domain name sickinthecity.com at 2am after feeling restless for a few days (when I feel restless, I know changes are coming my way!). It was the gateway to launching a project that was my own, after working on other people's ideas and passions for years.
It seemed like an easy feat— I would write about my experience as a young disabled woman living in a city. Only after a few months of sharing my blog posts, poetry and musings, the restlessness started again. It turns out I don’t really like being the centre of attention! My voice is one in a million of others who have a disability and, like me, need to share their story.
I opened up the blog as a platform for disabled and chronically ill women to share their stories, and the company started to take on a life of its own. As a disabled woman, successful in her career, I am often asked to grab a (virtual) coffee, and listen, offering guidance where I can, to other women who are struggling to find the right career, next path, and their purpose.
With experience running training and volunteer programs, the next logical step was to invite the disabled women who came to me for coffee, and dropped into my DMs on Instagram and Linkedin, to volunteer with me at Sick In The City. They wanted to get into a digital career but didn’t have the experience to put on their CV or a reference who would be their cheerleader— both of which I could provide.
As I saw how much hands on training programmes were needed within the disability space, a business plan started to form. I wished something had been available when I was a teenager, thinking my life was over because there was no way I would ever be well enough to be hired by a company who wouldn’t work me to exhaustion.
Applying for Community Interest Company (CIC) status was the perfect way to launch Sick In The City as a training and publishing platform, beyond that of a simple blog. We could fill a need, provide that lifeline and advocate for accessibility rights in the workforce. I could also build a company which aligns with my own values, and create a culture of the future: Truly flexible working hours, a focus on mental health, accessibility, development and confidence. As a non-profit, it means we can apply for grants and funding, and anything we make in profit can be put back into the business to create more opportunities.
I began to feel restless again about a month ago. We have 3 volunteers going through our training programmes, a solid business strategy and plans for the next few months… but something wasn’t sitting right. As a company we were only tackling one half of the massive problem of disability in the workplace… we could train our volunteers to become the most incredible they could be in their role, but if the company who hired them at the end of their training were not equipped with the knowledge of how to support them, then it would all be for nothing.
Knowing we needed to provide a full circle of support approach meant reassessing our audience too. It was a logical step for me to launch Sick In The City as a women-only company as that was where my experience lay. But If we were now looking at launching an Employer Support section, we should also launch the training positions so they were open to all genders.
I believe a strength I hold is that when an idea gets into my head that just makes sense, I can see the steps that need to be taken and just get on with it. We rebranded, relaunched and opened up our new employer service section in around 2.5 weeks.
This brings us to the SIC. you see today. Professional, simple and authoritative branding— We know who we are and we are good at what we do.
Launching our first event at the end of the month for aspiring freelance writers paves the way to what will be a full event calendar, which is run by us and those in our network who are experts in their field. They will cover everything from confidence, how to start in different digital careers, your legal rights in the workplace and how to make the most of Access To Work as an employee or an employer, to career fairs, skill workshops and networking events.
Our shop, over the next few months, is going to start filling with services and products to help trainees and businesses alike to reach their full potential. Our sponsorship programme will provide companies with the opportunity to hire-to-train their next talent, and prove they are committed to being accessible and inclusive employers.
I’m looking forward to developing our training programmes as we plan to welcome trainees through 2 fully funded hire-to-train Kickstart roles, and welcoming more volunteer trainees to work with us in their own time too.
We have big plans, and I can’t wait to read this article back in a year's time, the same way I have looked back at the past year, to see how far we have come.