EVA’S SPEECH FOR WARRIOR LAUNCH 30TH NOVEMBER 2007

A Huge Warm Welcome on behalf of Warrior to each and everyone of you here tonight. Many of you have come from far and wide and we are enormously grateful and of course to all the wonderful gang from Somerset.

I would like to say a few words about Warrior and how and why we have set up this life changing Charity. 
Having spent the last 20 years working with some of the most disadvantaged people, both in the UK and Ireland, it became very apparent to me that all of them were suffering in so many different ways.  Often their pain was not visible to the eye. When you think of the 31 million prescriptions written in this country alone for anti-depressants as reported in The Times last year , it shows you the scale of the problem we are dealing with. It is not just the disadvantaged who are suffering and indeed I am sure many of you in this room have suffered your own emotional pain. 

For the Last 10 years I have been running a Campaign called Business Action on Homelessness at Business in the Community helping 2,500 homeless people in 25 Cities break the cycle of ‘no home, no job, no home’ by providing work placements and then jobs. Working closely with Captains of Industry and The Prince of Wales it is very successful. However we were seeing that after 3 months many in employment , found their pain had resurfaced, they could not cope and lost their jobs, back on the no home, no job, no home cycle. This happened to Ullisses and Johnson both of whom are here tonight in their new starring role as Warriors.
It was for this reason that last year I took a group of homeless men and women, many of them Suicidal, to Sudeley Castle thanks to Lady Ashcombe to look at alternative ways to releasing emotional pain. 
I had the great privilege of reconnecting with Charlotte Cole who is the co-founder of Warrior and who I worked with 10 Years ago. Her brilliant organizational and accounting skills and of course her brilliance in bossying us all are such a great asset to the Warrior Charity. Incidentally it is also her Birthday at Midnight. 
I also met Hugh Lillingston of The Thorpe Institute who I have to say totally inspired me with his understanding of both the causes of emotional pain but most importantly how to release it gained from his 25 years experience of working in the Field.  Being bi-polar and suffering from depression for the last 13 years I decided to take part in one of his intensive 4 day programmes in Spain in May last year. It totally changed my life. For the first time I felt that the void had left me. I also found out that I had this extraordinary ability to heal people with my hands (this was certainly not on my career plan)
From this we have developed a 4 stage modular programme over 6 days using techniques based on Cognitive Theory, Neuro Linguistic Programing and other interesting techniques. This is one of the most effective programmes I have come across and it takes a matter of days not months or years.Euan and Ullissees who are here tonight from our first pilot are the proof that it works.

We have been blessed with the support we have received so far from some wonderful People. Darling Katrine – wow what can I say she is a real Wow -, who has been a Dear friend for 32 years Katrine came to see one of the Programmes and she too was amazed by it. She is even a Warrior herself! She has been the most wonderful Trustee, hosting events, opening up her little Black Book don’t know if that is good or bad!!, and she and Sophie her beautiful assistant have with the support of Island Records through David Sharpe, a very old school mate have been making a film of the Programme, and I am thrilled you have had a sneak preview! 
Another friend Sarah Coleman, a Human Resources expert, has very kindly given much of her summer to help write the training manual and is also being trained up as one of our future trainers along with Euan, Ullissees, and Sarah and Teresa and Selena from Ireland.

A little bit about the Charity, ‘Warrior’ is a Registered Charity with a board of Trustees, and is also receiving amazing support from Bain & Company, the leading management consultants, Peter Rawlings, a highly experienced councilor is acting as a consultant advising us on Professional and ethical matters. We have just completed as you have heard our first structured pilot with 12 of the most wonderful Warriors. 
We Now need to raise 250,000k to build our foundation, run 6 programmes next year including one for ex-service personnel with PTSD like Brian who you have just seen on the dvd, another for excluded Youngsters, and other disadvantaged groups. It is an ambitious target we will need All The help in the room to make our dream become a reality.

I would like to take a few Moments To pay thanks to those amazing people who made tonight such a memorable evening Every Committee Member (Please Stand up and Take a big Bow), Richard and his team at Hazlegrove – Trudy for food, Alan Neil & Sharon Kings Bruton – Patricia and Tony Tracey at GL Productions. Our wonderful designers, models, makeup artists, hair. All those who donated wonderful items for our Auction & Raffle. Bridgette Blazey who has done a fantastic job in co-ordinating the Event and Lucie Lewis who has been my deputy and her husband Mark, Carlie PP for the wonderful idea of doing a fashion show. Also like to thank Liam, Fiachna, Dave & Kiearan from the Hothouse Flowers who Have been inspirational in helping us tonight and with Liam’s help in taking Warrior out to new places such as Ireland. Finally to my wonderful family James, Emily and Ali who have been such a support. To my darling mum, dad and my sister Nicky who is here tonight.Finally to my best friend Warrior who passed away in April and I thank you Warrior for giving me the courage & strength to set Warrior up and to overcome my pain.