A bit of background...
The HOW People is the product of many a chat over coffee, wine, walking the dogs, playing with the kids and sitting putting the world to right on the beach.
Jo Watkins and Polly Crook have known each other for over 15 years since Jo and her then boyfriend, and now husband, Davey rented a house from Polly’s parents when they first moved to Mumbles. Polly, who is 10 years younger that Jo, was 18 yrs old and going off to University and Jo and Dave had moved to Mumbles to settle down, get married and have a family. They got on well, had a lot of fun but their lives were very different at that stage. Fast forward 10 years and a sad series of family events brought them back in touch and the rest is history.
The last 5 years they have spent a lot of time together. Polly has been a big influence on Jo and Dave’s eldest daughter, mini Polly and they have other children of similar ages. They are both serial organisers, planners and facilitators and love nothing more than putting the right people in the right place at the right time. Jo has run a business in the past on her own but knew that the next venture needed to be a double act. The dream team of organising and making things happen.
Dr Jo Watkins (Co founder)
The idea behind The HOW People, or HOW as it is often known, became apparent to me after seeing how influential young females role models were to my daughter, (mini) Polly, when we were travelling. Many of these young people we would never have met in our day to day life. The mindset of travel is to talk, to share and to connect with people in a way that we often just don’t do in the day to day hustle and bustle of life.
We want to offer a programme that sets out to connect and inspire young women during their journey through adolescence. So much is thrown at them. Social media and celebrity culture. Constant FOMO from their phones pinging day and night. Pressures to be a certain way beyond anything any other generation has experienced.
Too much time on screens, not enough time allowed to play and less time in the great outdoors.
We want to encourage our young women to be unique and to pave and walk their own path in life. We want to give them the tools to be confident and strong.
HOW is not just one thing it is a bit of a mix and in its infancy it is really one big trial. We thought for our first 6 months we would work on the basis of “let’s put some offerings out there that we think are important and valuable and see if anyone else does too.” It isn’t perfect but if you wait for perfect then things don’t happen.
Things have progressed and we have some really exciting things planned in 2020 so watch this space!
