So could you say a bit about the commission and what it is and how it came about?

Yeah.

So, uh, the commission was set up in September twenty twenty-four.

Um, and essentially, we're funded by an organization called Local Trust, which was itself funded by the National Lottery, which is a big funder in the voluntary and community sector here in the UK.

And the program they were running, called the Big Local Program, was coming to an end, and they wanted to investigate, well, what could we-- what, what was next? What was next for neighborhood interventions and, and kinda community building, uh, once that program had finished? And we were given this mandate to look into how you could support the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in England, and we're chaired by, uh, Baroness Hilary Armstrong, who'll be no, uh, stranger to you, Tim, uh, and Senator Best as well.

Um, and, uh, she had been a Labour cabinet minister and, uh, had also been responsible for a lot of the neighborhood renewal work, uh, and tackling social exclusion that happened under the New Labour government.

So, uh, alongside a, a mix of commissioners from local government, from academia, uh, from the voluntary sector, uh, from community leaders themselves, uh, we've been doing, you know, visits around the country, evidence sessions, reviewing the policies and previous interventions that worked.

What are you talking about?

What prompted Dad Tribes? And give us a little bit, uh, background about who you are and where you came from that, that, that warranted this incredible community that you've been building.

Yeah.

So I, you know, right after high school, I joined the Army, and I was in there for four years.

My time in service was filled with camaraderie and brotherhood, and it's a connection that you find very, really hard to replace when you get out, right? It just doesn't exist because when you go from combat situations and life or death situations, you build this relationship with these men that you spend pretty much 24/7 with for, you know, four years.

And then you get out, and you realize the civilian world doesn't work this way, right? The, the brotherhood, the camaraderie is stripped away from you immediately, and it's just gone.

And, uh-Finding friends as, as a grown adult, especially men, is hard, right? We, we aren't naturally social creatures.

We don't go and just, you know, hunt for friends all the time.

How can our audience learn more about Dad Tribes? What can we do to get connected? And what's, what part can we play once we do get connected?