Trustee:
“A trustee is someone with legal control of money or property that is kept or invested for another person, company, or organization”. (Collins, Undated)
This happened to me on Saturday just gone. I got made a trustee. I say this in what seems to be a really passive way: that I was made into one, that it happened to me. It didn’t really happen to me and I suppose really to frame it thus is a little bit disingenuous.
No. It’s not passive. It’s something I’ve worked towards.
Not necessarily that I’ve worked towards becoming a trustee of the British Dyslexia Association specifically, but certainly that I’ve worked towards doing ‘stuff’ on a national level in relation to dyslexia and special educational needs. I’ve worked really hard on various different projects and in different settings to make sure that I’m doing useful work. I work with the Wiltshire Dyslexia Association and I am SO lucky to be part of that group. I am so lucky to have been able to watch other committee members and learn from them over the last few years, since moving down to Wiltshire. I am lucky that I’ve had guidance from people in other branches of the dyslexia world who have shared huge amounts of their knowledge and experience with me. I am lucky that I’ve been able to share a platform with a amazing people like John Hicks or Sue Flohr. I’m lucky that Mr Dr Ross helps put me in a position where I can say yes to a lot of things.
I am very lucky and I have learnt a lot from a huge number of people.
That luck underpins a lot of the privilege I have and I hope I never forget that. But that luck is simultaneously underpinned and upheld by a huge amount of work and graft and ambition. I said from the moment I realised how wobbly folks’ literacy was in Barnsley, that I wanted to be one of those people on government policy documents. I wanted to be one of those people who they government talks to and who has their ear, and who is part of a national organisation that does ‘stuff’ to be useful and influence policy and support those whose voices are otherwise ignored.
Well, maybe I should be careful what I wish for, because now I very much am all of those people, all of those potential versions of ‘self’ that I carried in my head for years. It’s a position I take really, really seriously. I don’t take myself too seriously and I’d be daft to even try.
But my work, my work I take very seriously and I always will.
So this trustee thing, it’s big and it matters. Because (and the key here is in the word and the definition) it’s a position of trust. People, folk, members, all of them have entrusted me to do something important and to use the platform, the assets wisely and to make sure that they are used wisely and effectively. And that, I take very seriously and will work ridiculously hard for.
Also, it’s really blooming exciting!!
References
Collins (Undated) ‘Trustee: definition’ [Online] Available at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/trustee (Accessed 16 March 2021).
