Anthony Djondo

Our sister organisation in Blackburn, Bootstrap, has been operating for 16 years. They are wholly independent and doing regeneration work.

I joined the operation in 1999. I joined as Deputy Director and became Executive Director in 2001.

Before that, I worked for a project called the Community Enterprise Development Agency, which was a CSV (Community Service Volunteers) project. It worked with Black and ethnic minority community and voluntary sector organisations. The other arm of it worked with Black and ethnic minority individuals who wanted to set up in business. Ironically, Bootstrap took over that project in 2000. The project is now delivered by our Community Enterprise Department here. Running seminars around fundraising, management, staff, a whole raft of different issues. Then there is the one-to-one work with key officers and committee members within those groups in terms of organisational development.

As far as individuals wanting to set up their own businesses, they range from people virtually ready to go, in terms of their ideas, business planning etc., to those who need to filter all their different ideas, and then crystallise the ones that are feasible, build a business plan around that idea and submit it to banks, funders etc. I did that for about three years and we've now got that project in-house here.

That is a London-wide project. The majority of clients come from the boroughs of Haringey, Hackney, Islington, Camden, but they come from as far away as Merton - for example, an African Caribbean mental health project.