Currently...

I founded http://www.readinternational.org.uk/" rel="nofollow">READ International back in 2005 with some mates to collect books from local schools, sort them and send the most relevant, up-to-date, and high quality to schools in Tanzania and Uganda. Any books collected which were not relevant or appropriate to send were sold online or recycled to generate funding.

At the same time we delivered school workshops to British school children about global citizenship and young social entrepreneurship. We now have offices in London, Dar es Salaam and Kampala; there are close to 1,000 student volunteers involved, working from over 50 UK university sites; and we have corporate partnerships with global brands including KPMG, DHL, Big Yellow Storage, British Airways, Staples, Veolia and several others. To date we have sent over 850,000 books to East Africa. 

I am also the co-founder of http://www.nopc.org.uk" rel="nofollow">NoPC, an IT solutions social enterprise to provide affordable, low power, low maintenance, and sustainable computing technology to schools across the developing world. We use the latest cloud/server hosted technology to provide access to IT for the remotest of locations through an ISP network. We received initial investment from Shell Foundation. To date NoPC has delivered computing to 10 schools in Tanzania and 5 schools in Grenada (Caribbean).

In March 2011 I moved on from READ to write a book with my wife Nikki, about social entrepreneurs in Africa, whilst travelling from Cape Town to Cairo. This venture is called http://www.ontheup.org.uk" rel="nofollow">On the Up.

Before I escaped...

Before all of this I was a student at the University of Nottingham. I founded READ with some mates and when I graduated in 2006, I took READ on as a full time commitment and oversaw its expansion beyond Nottingham.

I always assumed I'd get a proper job in the city, and maybe I still will - but I was having so much fun developing READ that it just made sense to drive that forward.

Then once I got the bug for setting up and scaling projects, it kind of seemed easier to create my own job rather than going for interviews and filling in applications. The idea of rejection probably scared me off from the outset!

My moment of truth...

For all of us involved with READ it's being out in Tanzania. The first trip in 2005 was truly inspiring, but every trip I've made since has provided all the motivation and drive needed to do what we do. To see how much impact we could make by donating books to school children, I realised in 2005 that we needed to do all we could to take the project to scale.

In 2005 we donated just 25,000 books to 20 schools. We visited the Ministry of Education in Tanzania to ask how many secondary schools there were and quickly realised that 20 wasn't even a drop in the ocean. There were soon to be 3,000 schools and the pupil:book ratio was at 20:1, sometimes 100:1. This isn't right when schools just landfill perfectly decent books in the UK.

Planning for it...

The planning didn't/doesn't come naturally. I am more of a learn-by-doing type of person, rather than a planner. I roped mates into helping who were/are far more intelligent than I! Having just been through uni, I had mates at Accenture, PWC, Deloitte, etc. and realised what an amazing wealth of knowledge and expertise they had to actually help plan a business model for a social project to scale.

It's credit to these mates that a sensible plan developed and we were taken seriously by funders and our supporters.

The worst and best bits...

Pretty standard best and worst bits really.

Best bits are the ego boosting praise you get for being a 'do gooder'. The worst is not having any mates for the first few months, whilst you scramble around 24/7 begging, steeling, and borrowing your way through.

I've already mentioned the motivation we get every time we're out in East Africa, but that really is just part of the driver. There are so many great bits - the independence of doing your own thing, the variety of work, and working with people you really love working with!

Best advice...

"Titles are bollocks": Lara Morgan, 2010

I think this works on so many levels. It made me want to tear up my own business card that says 'founding director' so smugly on it. Painful!

Useful resources and information...

• http://www.unltd.org.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.unltd.org.uk
• http://www.enterpriseuk.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.enterpriseuk.org
• http://www.vinspired.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.vinspired.com

...have all been a massive support.