In my time as an entrepreneur, I have had the pleasure of meeting many dedicated people who help others to live their best lives possible. My next guest, Pasna Sallis, is a true example of how to combine professional knowledge with energy and drive to make a difference. She lights up the world and never shies away from a challenge.
In our chat, we talk about Pasna’s background in occupational therapy and how she went on to create the Weekday Wow Factor, a community that supports older adults. Pasna’s passion is infectious, and I hope listening inspires you in your work or in your community to connect with those around you and make life a little bit more fun and adventure filled.
Timestamps:
00:01:37 Pasna’s background in occupational therapy
00:04:19 What is Weekday Wow Factor, how did it start?
00:11:59 Adapting the activities to suit individual needs
00:15:19 Benefits of connecting with the outdoors
00:17:20 Opening up opportunities for social connection
00:19:16 Covid-19 & delivering activities online via Zoom
00:22:38 Recognising your achievements
00:24:09 Managing risk in a way that is empowering
00:26:40 Shifting perceptions about ageing & getting older
00:30:03 Staying energised under challenging circumstances
00:32:21 Competing for funds
00:36:19 What’s coming up next for Weekday Wow Factor?
00:41:55 What does creating a kindspace mean to Pasna?
00:48:07 Making technology accessible and getting online
00:51:52 How to get in touch and find out more about Pasna’s work?
Links:
Website: https://weekdaywowfactor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/weekdaywowfactor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeekdayWOW
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/weekday-wow-factor/
Connect with Pasna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pasna-sallis-5628473b/
Email: weekdaywowfactor@gmail.com or pasna.sallis@weekdaywowfactor.com
Transcript:
Caroline: Hello, Pasna. It’s so lovely to have you on the Create Your Kind Space podcast.
Pasna: Thank you very much, Caroline, for inviting me to your podcast. Really exciting. Thanks.
Caroline: I’ve been so excited about doing this chat with you because you are amazing. You have the most beautiful energy and such a can do attitude and I know people are gonna just love hearing about your work, finding about you and your background. And I think maybe to kick off, it actually would be so nice if you could do a little introduction and tell people a little bit about you and your background as an occupational therapist.
Pasna: Thank you so much for those kind words, Caroline, and likewise is so lovely to meet like minded people. So you’re definitely energetic and definitely positive and a great role model. So thank you so much for all the inspiration. An engineer and an entrepreneur it’s just amazing. So my background is very different from yours. Yeah, I come from an occupational therapy background and I qualified at Glasgow Caledonian University a long time ago in 1999, with my Honours BSE, honours and Occupational Therapy. I have lived across the world. I’ve lived in India as a child, and then Iran, followed by Scotland, the north of Scotland, the Highlands, and then across to Aberdeen for a wee while and over to America and California back to Glasgow to study occupational therapy. And then in 2010, I moved to India for a short time and returned to Glasgow. So that’s my background. I’ve been a solo parent for most of the primary school for my children, my two girls, and, yeah, they’re now turning into teenagers and that’s my kind of personal background. And in regards to work, I worked in NHS Scotland for 19 years and I worked across different conditions and age groups, from Paediatrics right up to older people.
Pasna: And I’ve really enjoyed every aspect of occupational therapy, I think because of its holistic nature, it’s a very interesting profession and I can’t imagine doing anything else. So, yeah, I love it. Do you want me to talk a wee bit about Weekday Wow Factor right now? Yeah.
Caroline: Yeah, oh, gosh, that would be amazing. Do you know, I think for me, I would love to know a bit more about what inspired you to set up Weekday Wow Factor and maybe tell people about your mission and all the great activities that you do.
Pasna: Thank you very much, Caroline. Yes, so Weekday Wow Factor was really inspired from over a course of years, speaking to different community members and just hearing and actively listening to what they’re wanting in life and what is a satisfying and meaningful occupation. So what happened was, in 2009 I was running a memory management group for people who were just diagnosed with dementiasixties they were mainly in their sixties, seventies and eighties, and at that time we just had a six week memory management programme where we would give hints and tips to compensate for some of the memory problems. And I felt it was such a shame after six weeks of bonding, that the group were no longer gonna to meet. So I asked my line manager at the time if it’s possible for us to turn this into a health promotion group, where we turn it into, like, an activity group to meet weekly and to go for nice walks, to go ten pin bowling and even Strathclyde Park, where there was the Big Wheel. So, very luckily, my line manager agreed for me to do that. And that’s where I got the first kind of taste of doing things that are not the usual kind of activities or assessments in the NHS.
Pasna: And, yeah, got some really good feedback. But when the summer months were over, we were thinking about what we’re going to do in the winter. So we actually joined the 50 plus seated aerobics class at the Time Capsule Leisure Centre in Coatbridge, and we realised that none of us could actually follow that class really well, just because the people who were attending knew the routines inside out. At the end of the session, I approached the leisure club manager to find out if we could tailor the classes so they fit for the person with dementia and also just using my knowledge and skills as an occupational therapist coming from the angle of dementia as well with the aerobics instructor. That was permitted and we worked together, the aerobics instructor, the community members and I, to develop an aerobics class. Then occupational therapy is not occupational therapy without food and drink. So we had lunch included. Then we had a whole stream of different activities. We had badminton, table tennis, dominoes, and lots of other activities too. This was back in 2009. I also decided, although this is great for my client group, who were about 15 community members, it would be great to open it up to people who don’t have dementia too. It’s peer to peer intervention and true public health work. I really relished in that. At the time of no social media, it just snowballed. And about a year’s time, we had 70 older adults coming along for gentle exercise at the start, lunch together, and then all these activities.
So at that time, the Scottish government were looking for good practice examples of dementia care because they wanted to launch their first ever national dementia strategy. I had forwarded our evaluation that I did when my kids were toddlers, as you do in the middle of the night. So I put that report together and I submitted it. And the Scottish government really loved the evaluation report and they had the choice to launch the first ever national dementia strategy from Alzheimer’s Scotland conference on our project. They decided to launch it from our project, which was just mind blowing. That was definitely the height of my career in the NHS. What a privilege to launch that. I was thinking at the time that weren’t really sure whether community members who don’t have dementia would come and participate in that activity, but they really did. There was such camaraderie going on. I found that the community working together, really powerful, really incredible to see everybody come together under the umbrella of dementia. That was my first hint of public health, and that project is still running in 2023, which is quite amazing. Then I was working with younger people with dementia later on in my career.
Pasna: During that time, it was mainly working with people in their 40s and 50s. There was this gentleman who was fairly inactive and he had health problems. He had difficulty reaching down to go and pick up his socks, for example. But I was trying to get him to engage in some meaningful leisure activities because his family were really concerned that he was socially isolated. Although he went for a walk around the block almost most of the time of the day, he wasn’t really engaging with others. I was going through my list of activities that I had for the NHS, and he was saying no to everything. I was thinking, There must be something. I was coming up, I suddenly came up with tenpin bowling, and I saw the glint in his eye. And I was like, Yes, I got you. I know that you want to play at tenpin bowling. So he agreed to come along to tenpin bowling with me. And the instant transformation was just incredible. So these very heavy tenpin bowling balls that he was carrying and he was shooting up and he was really competitive. And I just thought, I just looked round at the tenpin bowling place and there were all these aisles that were completely empty during the weekday.
Pasna: And I thought, this is such a waste of resource. It’s got the ambience with the music in the background and it’s a really relaxed atmosphere. And instead, we have so many older people’s community groups that are quite passive, based at tables and chairs with not a lot of physical activity. So that’s where I really got the idea that I really need to have something else in the community because of this waste of resource and places that already exist. You know, it’s not like you’re creating something from scratch. These leisure activities are out there and waiting to be accessed. Occupational therapists are best placed to work with the individual person and the community and try to adapt the leisure activities so they fit the person using them. It was just like a win, win. Then what really nailed it was my work with some ladies who were at advanced stages of their dementia, but they were in their early 40s and early 50s. That’s where I discovered the power of music, pop music, music, in particular. One example is a lady in her early 40s who was in a care of the elderly ward, and she had all these posters around her wall space of Duran Duran, Wham, all the 80s ones, and hundreds of CDs lying there.
Pasna: I was asking her her name and she wasn’t able to tell me, and she was digressing with her communication. But I noticed when we put the music on, a CD on, I was there with a student occupational therapist, and there was just that instant transformation again. Much better eye contact, smiling. She knew the words to that Duran Duran song. And I just find it really mind blowing that that was possible to be able to engage with a person and the person be able to express themselves as well. So at that time, I was looking for a place where this lady could go dancing. And there was another similar story of another lady as well in the same kind of scenario in that week. So because of these two stories, they were so powerful, I did go out to see what there was. All I could find was older people’s dance classes. So these ladies would have been seen as being disruptive, and they might not be able to follow the class either. So for me and my clinical reasoning looking at occupational therapy, was that it needed to be free style, where they can get up and dance if they want.
Pasna: They can sit down if they want. They can start singing in the middle of it, and it doesn’t really matter. In other words, there’s much more freedom and just no rules. So the only thing I could think of at the time were my student years, 20 years ago when I used to go to the nightclubs, and that’s what I did. I approached my local nightclubs that I used to attend, like The Garage and some others, and they absolutely loved the idea about giving something back to the community. But then I had to put my accessibility hat on and found the ideal nightclub, the Sanctuary Nightclub on Dumbarton Road, right opposite the art galleries in Glasgow. And it was a bungalow nightclub. So it just meant there were no steps, there weren’t accessibility issues. And there was a disabled toilet right off the dance floor. So that was ideal. So that’s how the Day Time discos began. But apart from the Day Time discos, there are a whole load of people who don’t like dancing, of course. So the other powerful leisure activity is walking. So we go on rural walks and people go at their own pace and within their own abilities.
Pasna: We’ve been to places such as Glencoe. And at Glencoe, we’ve walked around, but we’ve also taken the cable cars right to the top of the mountains to breathe. And that’s really amazing for people who haven’t been able to access the mountains for many years because of physical problems or anxiety. This is one way of doing it. And we found that really powerful as well. So we have foraging sessions, we go out for nature walks. We also cook in nature. We’ve been speedboating, zip sliding, host murder mystery lunches. So a whole bunch of wow factor activities. Many of these have been really started because community members have mentioned they’ve always wanted to do something, or they haven’t done it for many years, and they would like to do those. So my job really is to adapt them so that they fit. They’re the right fit for older adults aged 50 and above.
Caroline: I just love all this. Do you know when I listen to you and I obviously follow you online on your Facebook page and stuff, I’m always so jealous. I’m always so, that looks so much fun. I love seeing the pictures that you post and the updates about what everyone’s up to. I just think it’s such a wonderful opportunity for anyone of any age and for you to have created this space where people can gather and they can just have fun and be themselves. It’s just amazing.
Pasna: Thank you so much, Caroline. Yeah, absolutely. Our mission is that we believe that every older adult should have a right to good quality, fun, exciting leisure activities that enhance health and wellbeing and reduce loneliness in our communities. So, yes, it’s just phenomenal how many people have come, community members have come on their own and met new people and made new friends. The outcomes are just mind blowing. We’ve got a whole load of WhatsApp groups, depending on what activity people are interested in. But we also know that there are so many friendships that are being built in groups or between one individual and another. People are going to the theatre, they’re going to going for walks together. They’re going on holidays as well abroad together. So that’s really lovely outcomes that new friends have been created. It’s one of our main kind of agenda that we want to do. We want people to make new friends and feel connected to the communities.
Caroline: Yeah, those connections are so important.
Pasna: Yeah. They really are, especially during COVID time. So during COVID, we had, we pivoted to Zoom, daytime discos and chats. And there community members not only had friends in Greater Glasgow, but nationally. So they made friends all over Yorkshire, for example. There’s a group of ladies from Yorkshire who still continue to engage in our activities. So we’ve kept Zoom. So we have a hybrid model. And people from Glasgow have gone down to Yorkshire to meet these new friends. And we’re just waiting for the Yorkshire group to come along and meet some of the community members here.
Caroline: I’m so glad you mentioned the virtual Zoom adventures. That was what I was one of the first things when we met each other that we talked about. You basically taking people around the world from their sofas and their armchairs. It inspired me to do similar things with my kids, actually. When I was homeschooling, looking at how can I help bring some fun, even though we’re all stuck at home?
Pasna: That’s so true. Thank you for sharing that. Yes. So community members would decide the week before where they wanted to go in the world for a walk or a cycle. So we had places like going for a walk that we would be virtually walking. If you walk on the spot, moving your arms and legs, it’s incredible how many calories you’ll burn. So yeah, it was a walk and talk session. We had the YouTube video on mute and we were in Hawaii on the beach. It was just phenomenal. And another time, we invested in some pedal exercisers. We had community members pedalling away in the background. We can’t see the pedals, nobody can. So they can go as fast or slow as they wish. But we were pedalling right across the Alps. It was really amazing. Technology is really incredible. And we thought that we’d conquered the most challenging tasks at Weekday Wow Factor, such as zip sliding through the forest and going away to Iceland for a few days for a driving adventure. But Zoom and technology and YouTube just made us realise that the sky is not the limit, really isn’t.
Caroline: Yeah, it’s just great. Making it accessible for people as well who maybe can’t afford to travel or maybe have anxiety about traveling. I think it’s just such a wonderful opportunity.
Pasna: Absolutely. Yes, uh-huh. There are some people who are housebound as well. So for physical reasons or mental health reasons, it just does make it very accessible. So I do encourage our community members who are coming along to our face to face groups to not lose that difficult skill that they have actually learned how to use Zoom. So always just tap in once a month at least just to keep it. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And you never know when you might need to use Zoom. For example, we recently had a community member who went on holiday to Spain, and unfortunately, she fell ill and she was hospitalised for a couple of weeks. And she actually logged on to Zoom and still joined us at our day time disco and chat session, which was really lovely for all the community members to see her again. It was lovely for her too and for her wellbeing. So yeah, it’s such a great tool for us to stop using would be a disservice to our community.
Caroline: Definitely. It gives people much more options and they know that they can always stay connected with the community no matter where they are or what they’re doing. So that’s great. Absolutely. I was going to move on. One thing that I think, or a few things I think everyone should know about how amazing you are, Pasna, is some of the accolades and the recognition that you’ve received. So I think we’ve been doing a bit of work together, and I found out recently that you had received a Point of Light Award from the Prime Minister. So I was like blown away by that. That’s like such an amazing achievement. And then here’s me sitting at home watching Saturday Night Take Away with my family and being like, that’s Pasna in the front row. And then Ant and Dec, you they handed you a ticket for the plane for their trip to Orlando. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. And it was just so delightful, like to see your face and how speechless you were. It was just so amazing.
Pasna: Speechless for once, eh Caroline, I know.
Caroline: It was so lovely if you could share a little bit about those experiences and what that’s been like for you.
Pasna: Thank you, Caroline. We’re really blessed at Weekday Wow Factor. We have received quite a number of accolades. I think it’s just because we are doing something different, it’s something unique. There is nobody, no other community group doing Weekday Wow Factor opportunities to the level and the extent that we are. I think it’s refreshing and it’s simple things. We are not doing anything that’s like rocket science, for example, we went strawberry picking last week. I think a lot of organisations sometimes feel, oh, we’re working with older people, we’re not going to take them strawberry picking. That’s too dangerous for their back, for example, because they’re going to be bending right down and they’ll have difficulty. They might fall over, they might feel dizzy. But it’s really incredible the positive risk taking. So if you give people choice and if you set the right conditions and you tell them about the risks, it’s incredible what can be achieved. And then they’ve got the motivation of picking the strawberries. So yeah, I think sometimes it’s in regards to, just kind of believing in our communities and what they can do and their potential, rather than always just homing in on risk and what could happen in a negative way.
Pasna: Yes, those things can happen, too. I’m not saying it can’t happen. Anyone can slip, trip, fall at any time. But our job as a community group is really try to put those conditions in to minimise the risk. We can’t completely prevent, but we can minimise the risk. I think a lot of our activities sound like, Wow, you’re taking older people to strawberry picking. But it’s actually, it’s risk that’s acceptable, you should have seen our mini bus. It was completely full. Everyone, there was so many community members who wanted to go strawberry picking. Not only that, they came back and one lady had already started making jam straight away and she sent us photos of it. And one of our volunteers made strawberry ice cream. It was just amazing. So yeah, the accolades are great. We are very thankful. Right from the beginning, I think we just constituted as an organisation at the beginning of October. By the end of October, we had BBC Breakfast News, BBC Radio Scotland, and BBC News. All day on BBC News on the Saturday during their bulletins, featured us, which was really kind. From that and to the latest accolades, yes, we are very, very grateful for that.
Pasna: I’m glad that one of the big things that noticing by speaking to older people is that they feel, a lot of people feel invisible in society. If we are contributing to generate awareness to the scale of a Saturday night television at prime time, that’s just brilliant. It’s just getting the awareness out that older people are not passive recipients in our community. They’re actually very active and they support each other. At Weekday Wow factor, we are not like handing out. For example, if you’re having lunch, you don’t go around serving people, giving them lunch. People don’t want to be served. They want to get up from their seats if they can and go and get their own lunch as a buffet style. That’s just one example. Or they want to help others rather than receive help themselves. So you know, as far as people can do that, we are all about promoting independence and confidence. The accolades were great, but I really wish that our community members could have come along with me to Florida. I mean that would just be absolutely fantastic. It’s a shame that only one person from an organization can collect these accolades. Again, going to 10 Downing Street would be amazing if we had community members with us because they are a big part of the therapeutic tool because without them, it wouldn’t be a community group.
Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. Because they’re co designing and they’re feeding in their lived experience and what was going to be most beneficial for them, yeah.
Pasna: Totally correct. Yes, they are. The other part of this is, apart from working with older adults, we also have adults with learning disabilities who come to our discos. The bond is just incredible. In Glasgow, you’ve got that mother hen role going on. And then some of the older… Sorry, some of the people with learning disabilities have got disinhibitions, so they sometimes kickstart the party of our discos. It’s just incredible. Some of the older adults ask us if they’re missing, if they’re not there that week, if some of them are not there, where are they? They’re really missing them. There’s true integration going on and true friendship.
Caroline: I love that. You’ve raised some really important points there. I know we’ve had discussions in the past about healthy ageing and what that means and the stigma attached to becoming older. I’m trying to remember the phrase that you use. You talk about awakening your inner child, don’t you?
Pasna: That’s right. Yes, because that really came from the disco because you know it’s free style. You move according to how your spirit wants to move. So you really have got the ultimate freedom of moving. You’re not following instructions. You’re doing what feels right with that beat of the music and the mood that you’re in at that time, in that moment. Yes, uh-huh.
Caroline: Yeah. Oh, gosh, this is so good. This is so good. So bit more of a personal question for you. You put in so much effort behind the scenes doing all of this. I need to know, where do you get your energy from? Honestly, I don’t. You’re so amazing. How do you do it?
Pasna: Thank you, Caroline. I am naturally an energised person. You either love it or hate it. My girls spend all their time telling me to not have this loud voice I have and I just can’t help my loud voice. So I think I’m just like, born with it. I would like to subdue it. I must admit, some of the places that I worked in the past has not been so receptive about my big energy. It just doesn’t fit in certain situations. But I think we do. Wow factor is a place where my energy fits.
Caroline: Yeah. So it energises you. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Pasna: Yeah. Just naturally energised.
Caroline: I love that. So I wondered if we could maybe discuss a little bit more about what it’s like to work in the third sector and specifically in this kind of more social care supporting role, we know there’s a lot of challenges and things in the sector, but equally rewards as well in terms of the satisfaction, the job satisfaction that you get working as an occupational therapist. Maybe you could reflect on some of the challenges or what your kind of views are on the sector at the moment.
Pasna: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really crucial to talk about that. Thank you for this opportunity. I think the third sector has, it’s been really obvious how much of a big impact has had during COVID times. A lot of the third sector do not deal with waiting lists. We’ve got an open door policy where community members can walk in. A lot of the third sector do not have a nine to five job. They work on demand. It’s quite a phenomenal sector. But yeah, one of the big challenges is money, is resources. This is year six of me volunteering because of lack of funding in our sector. And to grow our sector, the money has to be placed very carefully and really thought about for the essential services. A lot of community groups and their leads really do not work the hours that they’re supposed to be working, probably easily doubling it. So we are an essential sector and the public services actually rely on us as well for some of their work. So yeah, it’s a shame that the resources are not always there for the third sector and the money is very tight. For example, a local funding in Glasgow at about November time last year, they were, say, out of 100 applicants, only 12 actually won the funding.
Pasna: So it’s very competitive. I’m sorry, that wasn’t a Glasgow funding. That was actually a Scottish funding. Out of 100, only 12 throughout Scotland. So that just puts it into perspective how…
Caroline: It’s quite challenging.
Pasna: Yeah. And we don’t want to do competition in the third sector. We’ve all got our own jigsaw piece. That we feel we’re really good at doing certain things in our jigsaw piece. And it’s all about just matching up all the jigsaw pieces for the whole picture. But unfortunately, the way the infrastructure is set out for third sector makes some of the organisations feel as if they’re competing against the other, which is a real shame and it’s a real missed opportunity, I think. Something that I would love to work on more to see if, you know I’m as dependent on another third sector organisation as they may be on our community group. We need to refer people. For example, Weekday Wow Factor journey, not everybody will remain in that Weekday Wow Factor journey forever. They will move on to something else. It might be because of their mood, could be because of their physical health, could be because they’ve outgrown it, or they might need more care. There are so many really interesting groups out there. It’d be really good if everything was mapped out so that we could refer at the right time for the right person to another community group.
Caroline: Absolutely. That totally makes sense. Some really important points there, some more funding, I think is always going to be beneficial, especially for projects like yours. I know we’ve been pursuing a few opportunities, so fingers crossed that we can get some of that across the line. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?
Pasna: Yes. With that lack of funding, we are really dependent on our volunteers. So we are extremely grateful for all the volunteers who help us out. Without them, Weekday Wow Factor would really struggle. And a lot of these volunteers that we have are actually community members at Weekday Wow Factor. We call them Wowers, and they want to have a more active role within our organisation. So they are there volunteering for us, whether it’s helping out with the sandwiches and the teas and coffees at the disco, or going and generating awareness about who we are and what we do at different stalls and occasions.
Caroline: Amazing. Amazing. We’ve talked a lot about Weekday Wow Factor and things. It’d be really amazing if you could share also any other things you’ve got coming up or projects that you’ve been working on. I think I’d seen that you were working a bit more closely with people with dementia and looking at support centres and funding for that.
Pasna: That’s right. Yes, I have, Caroline. There’s lots of exciting things developing at the moment. Just to let your audience know if they’re visiting Glasgow or they live in Glasgow, then in the West End, where Kelvingrove Art Galleries are, right opposite that is Kelvin Hall. We actually have an exhibition for Weekday Wow Factor on display there, and it’s completely free. So you’re welcome to come and see it. It was to do with a joint working with the museums, looking at radio and the centenary year to celebrate that. So there’s some beautiful stories of community members who are sharing their childhood stories around the radio and being around their family and their parents. So pop in. And we have another exhibition, too, in Byres Road at the Health & Wellbeing Hub at Glasgow University, who have a display about our disco there, too. So your audience are more than welcome to go and visit those. And what’s in the pipeline? Well, we’ve got a couple of different things going on. We were very lucky to win some funding through People’s Projects lottery fund, where we got 62 grand. We really appreciate everyone who voted for us to get that money and we wanted to expand our discos.
Pasna: You mentioned our new dementia work. Our new dementia work will be in Govan at the Men’s Shed. It’s not only for men as women are welcome too. It’s just a venue. It’s a beautiful venue with a lot of soul. We’re going to start a meeting centre for people who are awaiting diagnosis of dementia or people who have been diagnosed with dementia recently. We will be doing similar work to Weekday Wow Factor, but it’s going to be more tailored for people with dementia and their families and informal carers such as their friends to come along. It’d be a supportive group. We’re hoping that’s not going to be just an isolation. The members who come along will also access our other wider services that are open to anyone. We’re hoping to do that project in September. If you’d like to get involved with our focus group, our next focus group is on the 1st of August. We’ve held two public meetings where there was a resounding yes for this meeting centre concept, which is actually in the latest national dementia strategy for Scotland that was published last month. That’s the fourth strategy. So yeah very excited about that work.
Pasna: And what we’re going to do with the monies that we got from the National lottery is to attend other meeting centres in the north, such as Harrison Lewis and other parts of Scotland, such as Kirriemtuir and Fife as well, and Prestwick. And we’re going to host those discos there. And it will be for people with dementia and the local communities here. So we’re hoping to bring everybody together. So that’s quite exciting. That will take place between now and Christmas. They have an opportunity, I just had a meeting this morning about the Arts Festival and dementia care in Inverness. So we’ve been invited to come and host a disco there too. So that should be good as a grand finale.
Caroline: That’s like a whole tour of Scotland.
Pasna: Yeah, should be awesome. We also have an opportunity to work with Glasgow Life and the games that are coming to Glasgow. So we’re going to be hosting discos at different leisure centres around Glasgow and some exciting work at the moment with Carers UK. So over Zoom, we delivered our first day daytime disco and we got just incredible feedback for that. So it’s mainly carers who are doing such an important job looking after the loved ones from home, taking part. It’s just really good work. Between now and Christmas, we have the disco to run on a Friday, once a month. That’s a kind of new piece of work, too. There’s lots of things in the pipeline. There are other things too but eh.
Caroline: Just when I thought you were already really busy, that is amazing.
Pasna: Yes, there’s always things going on. In fact, my colleague Robert, who’s been in the sector for about 40 years, he said to me, This has been his best job, just because there’s never a dull moment. Every day is completely different and there’s always exciting things in the pipeline.
Caroline: Gosh, it’s amazing. Amazing. You’re so dedicated. I just loved it. Everything you’ve shared and finding out more about how Weekday Wow Factor started. It’s just amazing. I think the kindness and compassion that you have, it just literally radiates out of you. You give so much. In this podcast, I’m exploring kind spaces and what that means to people and what they do to look after their own wellbeing and the things that they do to focus on their own self care. So I’d be so interested to know more about what does that mean for you and what does that look like if you’re creating your own kind space, what do you do?
Pasna: My own kind space? Yeah, that’s a really good question and something that is work in progress. I think for many of us as entrepreneurs, it is work in progress. Good question, Caroline. Because I’ve been a solo parent and the children were young and you know I didn’t get a lot of help. Yeah, it can be quite tricky to find your own space, but when you do, I maximize it. For example, a few weeks ago, I got an opportunity to do a solo trip. I packed my bag, I took my tent, my one person tent, and headed to Glencoe when paddle boarded in one of the wee lochs there. Yeah, camped out and then did Aonach Eagach with the ridge. So that was quite exciting and thrilling, quite challenging too. But yeah, I felt great afterwards, really good. So sometimes I’ve got to like… I think it’s my personality too. So instead of having regular consecutive things, which I find really difficult to kind of fit in, just because of the nature of work. And my partner lives Edinburgh ways and then I’ve got children at home, so I can’t really have that consistency. But when I do, I maximize it for sure.
Pasna: I really love going up Conic Hill, which is only a half an hour drive from me. I used to do that regularly three times a week. But yeah, I’d like to work back into that schedule.
Caroline: Fine in time is so hard, isn’t it?
Pasna: Yeah, finding time. I like the hairdressers where you don’t have to book in a time. You can just show up. I look for those places because finding time is quite tricky. Especially when you’re wearing so many hats as a tiny organisation. You know we don’t have the luxury for many, all these years, we haven’t had an administrator, for example. So you know it’s tricky because you’re dealing with every email and every phone call that comes in. But it’s very important to raise the kind space. Thank you for that, Caroline.
Caroline: Yeah. So here’s your reminder to plan your next trip.
Pasna: Thank you so much.
Caroline: And then I’ll see your adventures online. I saw your picture, actually, from the top of the hill. It just looked stunning.
Pasna: Oh, it’s just beautiful.
Caroline: I’m not sure if I’d be brave enough to do something like that on my own though.
Pasna: Yes, uh-huh, it’s eh. You know what? Sometimes you’ve got to come out of your comfort zone to realise what else is possible. Otherwise, you’re stuck in that zone. I think I’ve just always been that way since I was young. For example, I was in boarding school, and then I used to travel between two countries, India and Iran on a flight on my own. So I think I probably got some skills from a very young age to be a little bit brave, a little bit outside the comfort zone because I’ve had to be. I don’t know. I like listening to people and seeing what they want to do and then shaping things around what they want to do as far as I can because I think that’s kind of mirrors the way that I think about things.
Caroline: Yeah, creating a sense of adventure as well.
Pasna: Yeah. I think life is an adventure. And so it should be. We shouldn’t be robotic. Yeah, Weekday Wow Factor from the back end is just as adventurous as it is on the front end. Yeah, it mirrors both sides.
Caroline: I love that. I love that. So we’re coming towards the end of our discussion. I can’t believe it. We could just talk for ages. So do you have any other thoughts or things that you are wanting to share? We’ve talked about a lot.
Pasna: Yeah, I just want to say a massive thank you for creating this kind space. Yeah, you’ve let me talk freely and openly, and I really appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time.
Caroline: No problem. I really just want to help people to learn more about the opportunities that are out there, to not see technology as a scary thing, and actually shine a light on the people that are doing all this great work as well. I think it’s so important. Then with that said, where can people find you? If people want to get in touch with you to maybe support your work or get involved in some of the activities, where will we signpost them to?
Pasna: Thank you, Caroline. Yes, well said. Can I just mention quickly about the technology you were saying that to make technology more accessible? Absolutely. I’m the most technophobe person you will meet. I was dreading it during COVID times, what are we going to do? Everything came to a halt. I remember 13th of March 2020, and just straight after the Cobra meeting, there was an announcement to say that it would affect older people most. And I remember that day having to stop the disco on the Monday in the nightclub and linking in with our WhatsApp group and noticed that video button that I’ve never used. And I was like, there’s a video on this. We can use it. We can continue our discos. And so that’s what we did. We had four people on our discos on the Monday, which was St. Patrick’s Day theme. So everybody was dressed in green, still celebrating St. Patrick’s Day from their living room. But unfortunately, that’s not a disco having four people. So then I looked into Skype because I’d heard of Skype. I’d used Skype when I lived abroad and other community members had heard of Skype and had accounts, but nobody could remember their passwords because it’s used on an ad hoc basis.
Pasna: We had Skype groups initially running and we played the music against it and it was like a really bad radio station. Just couldn’t get that right. But it was so sweet. The community members really didn’t mind. They were more about being able to see each other and being able to talk to each other. And then I had been on one of the SCVO’s digital learning sessions during that time. And that’s where I discovered Zoom and got linked in with the Leonard Cheshire charity, who’s just in the chat to say, Help, can someone help me connect other community members and their devices to Zoom? Because everyone had a different device. I was struggling with mine, never mind any other. So very kindly, we had Leonard Cheshire helping us to do some work remotely and using WhatsApp to connect one person at a time onto Zoom. And we’ve just never looked back. So yeah, technology, I really am scared that I lose all those skills if I don’t use it. So it’s really important for me to keep on using these skills and expanding and learning more because there’s a wealth of opportunities out there. And as you know, Caroline, it’s bigger than the sky, isn’t it?
Caroline: I know there’s so much out there, but I do love the whole thing of also keeping it simple and using it where it’s best placed. And yes, all this VR and things is amazing, but there’s a lot that you can do like in your examples where it’s a YouTube video, you know it’s not 360 interactive, but it still gives people a sense of connectedness.
Pasna: Oh, absolutely. Sometimes those videos that you’re talking about, the 360 one, they can make you dizzy, whereas something simpler is actually easier to use. Yes, uh-huh. Absolutely. Thank you for that. In regards to getting in touch, you can get in touch through our social media channels. We’ve got a very active Facebook page called Weekday Wow Factor. That’s quite easy. We’re on Twitter. It’s called Weekday Wow. We have a LinkedIn page that we’re starting to build. It’s called Weekday Wow Factor as well. Or my personal page, you’re welcome to connect with me. It’s Pasna Sallis, just like pasta, but it’s Pasna Sallis. We’ve got a website, Weekday Wow Factor dot com as well. So there’s various ways. Or you can just email us at Weekday Wow Factor at gmail dot com or Pasna dot Sallis at Weekday Wow Factor dot com.
Caroline: Great, that’s fantastic. I’ll pop all those links as well into the notes so that people can access them there as well. Thank you so much Pasna. I was genuinely so excited to get this opportunity and I know that you’re really busy. So for you to be able to give us this time is just wonderful.
Pasna: Thank you, Caroline, and have a lovely summer in Shetland.
Caroline: Oh, yeah, thank you. I am looking forward to that. We’ve got the countdown on for the holidays. When this goes live, I’ll be on holiday. Awesome. Thank you.
Pasna: Right, cheerio. Thank you. Bye.
Caroline: The thing that strikes me most from this discussion is how humble Pasna is about the work that she does, it is rare to find someone so dedicated and with such passion for what they do. I find myself drawn to her energy and wanting to do what I can to help as well. She is a true leader. So if I have one ask of you after listening, it is, support the Pasna’s in your life, make sure they are being supported and recognised for all the amazing work that they do.
As the podcast series continues, I encourage you to get in touch and share your stories and tips, I’d love to hear from you! Pop me an email at caroline@tltechsmart.com or message on social media @createyourkindspace
