Melksham woman’s royal invite for palace business pitch

Following an invitation from HRH the Duke of York to St James’ Palace, Melksham businesswoman Emma Smith took the opportunity to launch her product, myEnvolve, to the world, from within the Palace’s historic Throne Room.

Emma Smith, CEO of myEnvolve.com was delighted to be invited to the ‘Pitch @ Palace’, an event organised by the Duke of York to promote the most exciting start-ups in the country.

Over 300 dignitaries attended the event, including the who’s-who of the business investment community, several lords, ladies and princesses and even Jonathan Ross, who spent time chatting to Emma about the product.

Emma said, “myEnvolve. com is a community and public engagement app so it was great to have the opportunity to talk to some leading Government figures about what the app can do.

“Both the Duke and Jonathan Ross showed a keen interest in understanding how the app works and were particularly impressed to hear how, as a free tool, it enables groups in any town across the country to engage with their community about projects they are running.”

myEnvolve.com allows people to enter their postcode to see decisions that are being made about their area, and to have their say on any of the hot topics locally. This means that they have one place to find out about the council’s plans, to engage about their community campus or neighbourhood plan, to talk to their children’s school and local GP’s surgery, to understand what changes the transport or energy companies are making to local services, see plans for housing developments and to hear about community projects being run in an area …  and so much more

“myEnvolve has been developed, following two years of research with mentoring from the University of Bath’s Innovation Centre, into why people do not take part in consultation activities,” added Emma. “Private, public and voluntary sector organisations need to engage people about the products and services that they provide, but obtaining the public’s views and experiences can be time consuming, resource intensive and very expensive.

“Huge sums are spent each year by organisations trying to find out what people think. However, a poll by Ipsos Mori suggested that over 75% of people want to share their views on issues they think are important – but they have neither the time nor inclination to trawl through corporate websites or to attend meetings at inconvenient times.

“Using myEnvolve the public can see all the decisions that affect them, their lives, their families and their community in one place and decide what they want to engage with, all from the comfort of their sofa.

“And for any organisation, big or small who wants to engage with a community or just talk to them about their project, be they a voluntary group, charity, council, WI or business, myEnvolve.com provides a free tool that enables them to quickly and efficiently put their project onto the app and start to engage with their local community instantly.”

Current projects on the app affecting Melksham include a survey from Melksham Town Council about how they could improve their services, feedback wanted about community grants, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign gathering feedback about dog fouling problems in the area and thoughts from local people about whether shops should be allowed to be open later on a Sunday, ahead of a Parliamentary vote later on this year.”

Registration is free and only takes a second, but if you feel you may like more help myEnvolve are running a free session at Melksham Town Hall on Wednesday 21st May at 2.00pm to help organisations build their first project for their site or a member of the myEnvolve team would be happy to visit your group.