WORDSBY_

Sophie had volunteered in illegal camps as a legal aid, to help people understand the law surrounding their asylum or refugee application. “In eight separate instances, completely unrelated, someone gave me a poem. When they gave me a poem it was often because they had nothing else to give except their words. No matter what your background is, the self-expression you always hold within you, no-one can take that away from you. Situations can make you want to be less expressive, but no one takes away the fact that you own your words, you own your self expression.”

Sophie showed Bethany the poems. “It was crazy” Bethany comments “they were written in someone's second language, or third, or fourth language, and they were amazing - even though the English was often broken”. This sparked an idea: why not get these published? Publishing them alone they feared may not allow the poems to be taken seriously because of the broken English, but why not publish these next to published poets? 

The idea

They were at a burger restaurant when they had the idea. They asked the guy behind the bar if he could print off a piece of receipt paper and started writing: “we basically wrote the whole idea down on this receipt”.

“We were always going to do it to raise money. I was a member of Unicef Next Gen and I knew that a lot of issues that adults face are down to how they were treated as children.” Sophie explains “We knew we could sell a book - and the purpose of this was partly the idea of putting human beings side by side and reinforcing equality, and partly to raise money for a cause.”

A personal experience

“There’s a refugee called Salah - who is now one of my closest friends”, Sophie tells me. “I talk to him on the phone, we Facetime all the time. He’s just a mate - I don’t see him as a ‘refugee’. When he was six, the Janjaweed came to his village and murdered everyone there. They conscripted a lot of the children to become child soldiers, but he escaped into a refugee camp. He remembers the moment when he looked around the tent and just thought ‘this is not my life’. He left the refugee camp and made the journey to Libya, where he was trafficked for ten months and told to pay off his boat trip. He then escaped that, and came to Europe.  

“I met him in a camp, and we would just go and get a pizza and a beer together. I would pay, but it was such a normal friendship. As a child he faced such hardships, and if Unicef had the funding to be there, then a lot of his trauma wouldn’t have been so intense. I thought there’s no way I deserve more education, the house I grew up in, any more than he does.”

“That’s the awesome thing about WordsBy_”, Bethany adds, “we are the first project with Unicef Next Generation to raise money for the children’s emergency fund - that sends money directly to the grassroots”. These are the hidden emergencies that don’t have a fund attached to them. Places like Lake Chad, which has had drought for many years, Kenya where climate change is severely affecting farming. Unicef can decide where the greatest need is and direct the money there.

Tapping into Unicef Next Gen to make it happen

Unicef ‘Next Generation’ is a sector run entirely by volunteers. “If they hadn’t existed we would have had to do everything ourselves, but through Next Gen we were able to connect to people with expertise. It turned an idea into something that actually raised 10k in a month for Unicef.”

Through Next Gen, they were lucky enough to be introduced to Charlie Smith Design: a small, female-owned design agency who were keen to help, pro-bono. “They were very sold on the idea from the beginning” said Bethany. The designer helped support too by connecting them to the suppliers: the printers and designers. “She really worked with us, listened to us, and guided us through the process. We didn’t even know you had to put a book together in sections as that’s how it’s bound together. It’s crazy how hands on you are with it - you know exactly what that book will look like, and feel like, and smell like.”

How they put it together

“Instagram was a very useful tool for finding poets. Literally by searching ‘London poetry’. About 100 of the 138 authors came off Instagram. And lots of them hadn’t been published before. We went to poetry nights and went up to people and were like ‘Would you be interested in being published?’ When we explained we have the platform to publish them it helped - it was an amazing opportunity for them anyway, lots of them now have ‘published poet’ in their bio. We were lucky to do something in the poetry scene, we didn’t know it was so community driven and so supportive - that was unexpected.”

Sophie, who works for the Red Cross, took the role of poetry submissions from more vulnerable people. “We had to safeguard, and navigate those conversations safely - especially with recovering addicts, or ex-gang members. I had to go through an official safeguarding process and be known as a safeguarding lead - to make sure the conversations were done in a safe way. You never know a person’s background, so you need to be sensitive. It may be hard for them to express it in another way other than poetry.”

Bethany played a complementary role. She’d just graduated with a degree in creative writing and playwriting, and led the outreach to the public authors. ”I had pushback all the time. I was sending out a lot of emails, and I knew I would just get one reply. A lot of published poets don’t have instagram, and I would have to explain the same thing to the PR manager, the agent, the marketing department. You’ve just got to do it. It’s just a job of remembering that at the end of all this, you’re going to have a book.”

Funding the project

“We knew we couldn’t donate 10k at this age to Unicef, but we can donate our time to raise money. The printing costs were nearly 10k, and an anonymous sponsor stepped in to fund them, as she saw the opportunity. The cost of a book was £4.80 to print as it was a high quality finish, and it sold for £15. She thought ‘if I invest 9k in this I’m actually going to make three times that amount for the charity’.”

Accountability matters

“We started Instagram really late”, explains Sophie “The project was running for 14 months before we started Instagram. Once we started Instagram it made us accountable. My mum is based in Australia, and she had booked plane tickets for October for the launch, so we really pushed it through in the last bit. In August consistently I was up until 3am and then going in to work at 9am-5pm. It was a personal obsession” 

Sophie and Bethany worked together with the team on the weekends, weekend days which they said helped make them more mentally strong. Bethany explained: “all of a sudden you aren’t doing it by yourself, you are doing it with a group which feels more fun. You say ‘this Sunday I’m going to reply to emails’, and then it gets to Sunday and you don’t want to. If you’re meeting up with people, you’re accountable to each other and you can work off other people’s energy. We should've done more of those.”

Remembering why you’re doing it

“When it’s out there and it’s done, that’s when it feels good. It’s not going to feel good during. I think it’s just understanding that when you’re doing a side hustle, it is going to take up your time.”

There’s also the matter of work. Luckily, Sophie’s work was really supportive of the project. During her lunch hours she would work on WordsBy_ - “I had to be super transparent... I’m a fundraising manager at the Red Cross - and it’s very similar to raising funds for Unicef - but they were super supportive”

“You’re investing time in yourself too” adds Bethany “I have insight from my work about how businesses grow, but it was interesting to take those skills and develop them in a project. Learning from other people, learning about a completely new industry I didn't know anything about. You develop confidence, professional confidence. There are mistakes you can make on a project like this that you won’t make again. Whether that’s in your professional line of work, or if you start your own business.”

How to give yourself the best chance of success

“Surround yourself with people who also believe in that idea” says Sophie, “Find your gaps and how your idea could fail. Map out how it could fail, identify your skill gaps, find people to fill them, and give those people authority to make decisions: that would be my main advice…. and ask for help. People want to help you.”

WordsBy_ is available to purchase from Waterstones or Amazon.

They are also running poetry open mic nights at Soho House. Follow the Instagram to stay up to date.