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Inspirational Friends was set up in 2003 by Lisa Lyman. Originally it consisted of a local group in Wokingham
that met one evening a month for a talk and social time. Lisa also set up this website and hoped to
set up similar groups around the country. The Wokingham group thrived and in 2004 Lisa started running
a monthly lunch time event aswell. However, Lisa's plan to start up more groups didn't really take off.
In early 2005 Lisa and her husband decided that it was time to live their dream and move to the country, Lisa
therefore started looking for someone to take over running the Wokingham group. This is where I got involved. I'd
started coming to Inspirational Friends meetings the previous summer, when I moved to Wokingham. It was a great
way to meet like minded people. I was planning to leave my job and start up as a therapist myself and I thought that
running IF would compliment this. I took over running the events in April 2005. At this time Lisa was still running
membership and the website. However, having finally moved house in December 2005, Lisa decided that it was time to move
on to other things and asked me to take over the membership and website as well.
At this point there was still only one group in Wokingham, so I decided to abandon the idea of setting up other groups
and instead try to make contact with existing groups around the country.
Inspriational Friends and the website have now evolved so that people can join our community online and take advantage of various free advertising opportunities and members' discounts. So we now have an online membership as well as a Wokingham membership. We also offer low cost advertising for therapists and those running mind body spirit events.
The Wokingham group is now run by Rhys Ridgewell, giving me more time to spend on developing the website.
The website is constantly evolving and I welcome any suggestions for improvements or offers of content.
Nancy Hine