This weeks lecture was the expert panel with all the mentors to listen to our pitch ideas and help answer our questions.
From last week we had the notes taken down of what we wanted to say for each section including the question.
The Pitch itself seemed to go well as we were one of the first teams to have ‘mentor votes’ on the board for who was interested in helping with our project.
The next stage in this weeks lecture was to have 30 minute ‘meetings’ feedback sessions with the mentors who thought they could provide valuable information for each group. Again for these ‘meetings’ I will make sure to take down plenty of notes for the team to reflect back on as it is easy to forget important information when so much is given to us at once.
My groups first feedback session was with Luke which he provided lots of very useful information and highlighted ideas which the team did not think of previously.
Luke first highlighted that some prisons currently have these packs, which is something I knew of and had highlighted to the team in previous weeks. More specifically Hydebank was mentioned which was the exact original source in my research what sparked this idea for the team. I did mention to my team in meetings before that it is already a thing and to consider what would make us different/ unique from what exists already.
He also said how Hydebank don't get ‘Support Packs’ and he would be surprised if Maghaberry did so packs for certain prisons was a idea what came from this talk. It was highlighted to consider the differences for needs for each prison as each prison have different types of prisoners.
As a reminder this was our question: ‘We’re unsure about the logistics of the supply chain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on which specific charities or social enterprises could realistically collaborate to manufacture and stock these packs without creating a new burden for prison staff’
As for our idea we suggested that maybe charities could help provide goods for these packs, however Luke said that food banks have ate up charities. But he did suggest smaller local charity groups could work. He said similar to COVID using community centres it could be similar to this. Sourcing these would create sustainability for our idea. Luke said to reach out to local suppliers and supermarkets to build connections for charity donations.