This year, we’re doing something a little different to mark International Women’s day by reinventing the ‘manel’, showcasing men supporting women changemakers – highlighting that collaboration is key to social change.This year, we’re doing something a little different to mark International Women’s day by reinventing the ‘manel’, showcasing men supporting women changemakers – highlighting that collaboration is key to social change.
We’re inviting three panels of men from a range of industries and backgrounds to join us at this free event to discuss how, together, we can make this year’s International Women’s Day theme of “An Equal World is an Enabled World’ a reality.
Ben is one of the Directors of St Peter’s House – Ben will be joining us to share his views and experiences on our business partner and life partner panel. We get to know Ben ahead of the event:
What is your role/organisation?
I’m one of the Directors of St. Peter’s House and that means that I work alongside Hannah Skinner (who has been linked to the Flourish Network for a number of years), to lead the organisation. Together we oversee the charity, which is anything from vision and strategy, to building management and making coffees! There are various sub areas that we look after including Milk & Honey, The Spark Rooms, Multi-Faith Work and more.
How diverse is your current leadership team – and/or what initiatives are in place that you support?
We only have a small team at SPH. It is made up of three men and five women, three are from BAME communities and so I think that we’re quite diverse. We have a diversity and inclusion policy it place and much of what we do is framed through the lens of inclusion. We have the Centre for International Women Artists at SPH, we work alongside the LGBTQ+ community on a number of events each year and whenever we have public events we work to ensure that they are diverse.
What career advice would you give your younger self?
Career Advice to my younger self. I’m not sure to be honest – before I was at SPH I was a Vicar in South Manchester, where amongst other things I set up a new school and prior to that helped to set up Nexus Arts Cafe in central Manchester.
Someone once said to me, “it’s the exciting things that will cause you to burn out” – it’ the things that it’s hard to say no to, and for a variety of reasons you end up saying yes to too much. I think that my advice to my younger self would be to say no to more and be attentive to the false idol of busyness. The myth of busyness tells us that busy people are important people and so the temptation is to work harder so that we are busier and then tell ourselves that we’re really important. Nowadays, when people come up to me and say ‘How are you doing Ben, I bet you’re busy’. I tend to say no I’m not busy regardless of whether I am or it. It debunks the busyness myth and can liberate others to say that they’re not busy and not important too!
Join us and Ben for an evening of collaboration, debate and lots of fun! Grab your free ticket today.
