An Explanation

This web portal has been created to this current Demo version to help other organisations and people to realise that you can provide a "counseling service" over the internet. When I first outlined the concept, a certain amount of resistance was encountered and all of it mainly down to either (i) a difference of opinion over what exactly counseling is and and how it is performed, or (ii) an inability to visualise how it could work.

We strongly believe that this kind of service can provide 24/7 comfort and support to those who need it the most. Whether you have difficulty in talking about how you feel, or maybe you don't know how you feel, perhaps you have 'proximity issues', whatever... the point is that by bringing together people who can share problems, advice, emotions and experience, crucially by using video-based content, this kind of portal can provide an important complimentary level of support counseling to a much-neglected band of people. We've decided to call it counseling-by-proxy; it's what we get when we phone a friend who knows how we feel; it's what we feel when we watch a film and say "..that's exactly how I feel about it.."; and it's what the untold thousands of volunteers do all round the world in person. The main difference here, is that if we can grow this service, it is available to anyone with a net connection and provide instant support and promote self-help immediately.

For the record, this site is simply a response to adversity. I personally have not had to deal directly with it so far but I have been inspired by close friends and people I met who have battled disease with incredible grace. I also became acutely aware that at testing times, communication barriers can affect even the closest or relationships and this kind of service can certainly help to breach those barriers too.

A couple of years ago, I directed a short film about a dear friend's wife and a number of other people who were all dealing with breast cancer. I then allowed a national cancer care charity to use the finished film as a part of their support package for newly-diagnosed patients. The chastening experience of dealing with a large charity aside (which was actually far worse than anything the commercial universe has managed to throw at me), when I heard some of the feedback as to how my little film had helped people, well, the joy I felt was overwhelming. The short story is that as a result of being exposed to disease, and witnessing at first hand how ordinary people frequently respond in an extraordinary way, this portal is simply a reaction that had to happen.

Sites of this nature are costly to create & run, so we are looking for partners, sponsors, contributors, etc. to help us get the thing off the ground and then keep it flying....

We would love to hear from anybody who wants to help....