Welcome back to our Step it Up Campaign, where our aim is to inspire others to become more active in charity work by sharing stories of social responsibility.
Meet David Bailey
David is a tango teacher and co-founder of http://www.learningtango.com. David has learnt from many popular UK and international Tango teachers, including Kicca Tomassi, Giraldo Diomar, Ricardo Oria, and others, and now runs tango classes created to teach people tango in a relaxed and informal manner.
What you do for charity?
“My business partner Ann and I regularly donate our time and experience in this area, offering our dance teaching skills pro bono. At the simplest level, we donate 1-hour Argentine Tango private classes as prizes in charity raffles and competitions. We also regularly teach and DJ for a monthly charity dance event.
At a more involved detail, in 2014 – 2015 we coached a couple once a week for 3 months, to allow them to take part in a “Strictly Come Dancing” charity event to raise money for the North London Hospice. The event raised tens of thousands of pounds for the hospice.”
How did this happen?
“We were approached by a local salsa organiser and teacher we know, as a couple wanted to learn Argentine Tango, and we committed to teaching them for a minimum of 8 weeks, coaching them to do a tango performance. Neither of the partners had ever danced as a couple before, so it was a completely new experience for both of them, but they both did us proud!”
Why is this a good fit for your brand?
“We can show off our teaching skills, and we had an opportunity to promote our classes at the event. We also had an opportunity to perform a show dance, to interest people and show them what we can do.”
What have you got out of it?
“Apart from the business and brand benefits, we personally expanded our own experience of teaching for performance (instead of teaching for social dancing), and we gained some valuable ideas for this area which have helped us in commercial ventures such as providing show dance tuition for wedding dances and similar.”
What’s your advice to anyone thinking of doing this?
“Do what you love, love what you do, and donate what you love to do.”
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and get in touch if you would like to share your own story!
