Sponges & Belief – The Early Days of Genuine Futures
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Buckets, Sponges & Belief
The early days of Genuine Futures weren’t glamorous.
In the cold winter of January 2023, with no funding, no marketing, and just buckets and sponges in the boots of their cars, Sam and Mike started small.
They took young people to business centres across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, and Lancashire, setting up makeshift car washes. Each wash wasn’t just about cleaning cars — it was a way of showing young people what they were capable of, while teaching teamwork, customer service, resilience, and enterprise skills.
Sam explains: “We knew we couldn’t wait for perfect conditions. We had to start with what we had — and what we had was buckets, sponges, and belief.”
It was raw, grassroots entrepreneurship. A proof of concept that when you start with belief in young people, transformation follows.
This simple start became We Shine Any Car — the youth-led car care and vehicle maintenance enterprise that now powers the Young Futures Hub at The Scrappers.