Tue 14 / 04 / 20
How we can help our city
We contacted our members working in the charity and non-profit sector to find out what they most urgently need help with in response to the Covid-19 crisis. From helping raise awareness and volunteering to making donations and offering operational support, read on to find out what you can do to help and how you can get involved.
Allsorts is delighted to announce that all LGBT+ youth groups, 121 support, advocacy services, and our parents/carers support group have been adapted and launched for online suitability and are well underway.
Additionally, our Training & Education team have adapted LGBT+ inclusion training and workshops to be delivered online. Our first session received great feedback, and we are currently taking bookings for any businesses interested in creating safer and more inclusive spaces for LGBT+ staff, customers and service users. Please contact education@allsortsyouth.org.uk to enquire about a bespoke package for your organisation.
Here are some ways you can help:
- Awareness-raising: As of May 1st, Allsorts will be launching a 2 month long #KeepProud Appeal and Social Media Campaign to create content for isolated LGBT+ people whilst raising funds to adapt and maintain our vital youth services at this difficult time. Any help in promoting this campaign in the near future would be an incredible help.
- Donations: We are asking for pledges for donations or sponsorship of the #KeepProud crowdfunder (1st May - 30th June) to ensure this campaign hits the ground running.
- Volunteers: We are looking for volunteer performers, workshop facilitators, artists and more to run short (30mins-1hr) online sessions/performances in aid of the Allsorts #KeepProud appeal.
- If you would like to get involved and help promote the #KeepProud Appeal, pledge a donation/sponsorship, or offer a performance/workshop, please contact effiefowler@allsortsyouth.org.uk
We are planning a series of educational pieces on LinkedIn over the next 3-4 weeks, based on our last few years’ work around virus transmission and the wildlife trade.
If people are interested as to WHY we are all locked down, we ask that you read, share and comment on our LinkedIn page.
This will hopefully culminate in a live chat session, with Dr Mark Jones (our head of wildlife policy) where we can invite people for a Q&A further into April / May.
Raising awareness is definitely something we require help with along with donations. We are launching a virtual collection, which you can donate to here.
Brain Tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer. We need your help to minimise the risk of losing the crucial advances we’ve made over the last decade. Any support would be gratefully received during these troubling times, especially as we are looking at a 50% drop in annual income right now. Let’s keep research working. Together we will find a cure.
Brighton & Hove Food Partnership
We are coordinating the city's efforts to get food to people in poverty who are vulnerable or isolated because of Covid-19. Food banks in the city previously distributed 420 food parcels each week but we are now receiving requests from twice as many people, and demand is growing. You can make a donation here to help pay for food and other essentials.
For anyone in the city who wants information about accessing food during the Covid-19 crisis - including food delivery services, meal deliveries, food bank information and advice on volunteering – here’s a summary of services and ways to get involved.
Brighton & Hove Soiree Rotary Club
We've bought a year of fully licensed Zoom so could do with leveraging it to our best advantage. We have 3 or 4 meetings a week and know how to share screens, use a whiteboard etc., but if anyone is a superuser, I could do with some Zoom assistance.
If anyone is involved in the supply or delivery of food, most of our members are having to take great care due to their age or underlying conditions. Offers of food deliveries or being made aware of such services, errand running, shopping etc, would be extremely helpful.
A lot of our volunteers are simply not allowed to offer their help to the charities that we support due to their age or a health condition. If anyone would like to take over some of our volunteers’ tasks, even a portion of them, that would be great. In some instances, there are requirements that need to be met (e.g. a DBS certificate).
Please email or call Andrew Lawrence on andrew.lawrence@hove-soiree.co.uk or 07803 926685 if you can help.
Staff who have been furloughed are allowed to volunteer, whilst obviously keeping in mind all the current Public Health Guidance.
If you or your staff would like to find volunteering opportunities you can contact the Volunteer Centre on volunteercentre@bhcommunityworks.org.uk or visit our website.
Covid19 has increased our levels of operation quite considerably. It's highlighted exactly how many people in our communities have very little to fall back on outside of what they get for working.
Since the pandemic began, we are now supplying an extra 35 new community organisations with food - all set up in response to the crisis. This, combined with the organisations we regularly supply food to (many of whom have ramped up their services to meet the extra demand) - means that we now supply 156 community organisations with food every week. As the hospitality industry has had to close down, the amount of surplus food we save from landfill has increased dramatically. We are getting over 20 tonnes of food a week to distribute, feeding over 12,000 people. We have streamlined our service and established safe ways of working in our warehouses, including social distancing and wearing face masks. We anticipate the effects of the pandemic will be felt for months to come, so we are preparing to carry on with meeting this growing demand for food. One of the things we need to do urgently is find another warehouse that we can use to store our ambient food in. If anyone has any suggestions/offers, please do get in touch.
We therefore really need both cash and food donations:
- People can donate food via the food donation points at their local supermarkets.
- They can donate cash by either texting or by heading straight to our Just Giving page. A small, regular donation, something like £5 per month, would go a long way.
- Texting donations can be through a one-off payment of £5. Text GIVEFOOD to 70450.
We have been heartened to see our community pulling together at this incredibly difficult time. Our clinical and bereavement teams not only continue to deliver care for people and families coping with terminal illness in Martlets Hospice and in people’s homes, they are also primed to make beds on our IPU available should our local NHS hospitals need support. Our clinical teams have received vital donations of gloves and scrubs from many amazingly supportive local businesses, and every day we hear from more local people keen to help. Our Nurses, doctors and carers still need PPE. If you have access to any you are able to donate we have listed specific items here.
Understandably our patients and their families have many questions as they deal with the impact of coronavirus. We have seen an increase in calls to our 24-hour telephone support team. The team is available to answer questions from patients, GPs and carers. With the fantastic community response to our recent appeal, we have been able to purchase laptops so that our admin and nursing teams can manage the increase in calls and work differently to keep patients safe. If you are able to donate to our appeal, please do. Thank you!
Because of lockdown, we have had to adapt our response to need in both the Women’s support service (Gateway) and Antifreeze (homeless) – we have set up Skype, Facetime and telephone support for the vulnerable clients that we have – 100 – and we have talked/interacted with them at least twice with each of them. We have also delivered food parcels to those that need them.
We are currently developing the means at present to organise a pop quiz online, streamed via YouTube that people can donate voluntarily via JustGiving or a similar platform. For a business this could very quickly develop into wonderful partnership/branding opportunity for both sides – this is not necessarily a local opportunity so could be rolled out across the country.
Companies with technical/streaming expertise/large networks/Broadband facilities/IT skills may consider this a great way to assist – and to raise their profile.
Other ways to help are:
- Reposting of social media messages (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Donations (equipment or cash)
- Laptops, tablets, Macbooks, or phones are very much in demand.
Get in touch via email on roy.stannard@offthefence.org.uk or phone, 01273 733566.
We are raising funds to directly support local food banks, community groups and those supporting the vulnerable with self-isolation packs and mutual aid.
Donate to the Brighton Community fund here.
Survivors' Network, the local Rape Crisis Centre, is still operating. While our groupwork is suspended, we are offering video-counselling, remote ISVA support and a twice-weekly helpline. We are hoping to soon be able to share videos from those who normally lead some of our groupwork, to enable survivors to still access support and feel connected.
Before the lockdown, our counselling waiting list was already 17 months long. We are now in a situation where sexual violence is likely to rise, and we are anticipating a significant rise in referrals post-lockdown. We need your support to help raise awarenessof the fact that referral pathways are still open now - people don't have to wait until after lockdown to request counselling support, or to report to the police and seek support with that process. This will help to spread out the referrals, and to ensure that all survivors know that support is available if they need it.
All regular and planned fundraising projects have been cancelled or postponed. Any support you can offer us, big or small, would be hugely appreciated to help bring down the counselling waiting list - you can donate here.
We have also created an online resource post packed full of information on helplines, support apps, educational sites and support sites for children, ways to "pretend you left the house" and more - which has been really helpful to share with survivors, but is useful for anyone who is stuck at home (which is the vast majority of us).
At the Beacon, we have taken a hit on our fundraising activities, which is the nature of the current situation and couldn’t be avoided. We will shortly be promoting a fun campaign that supporters old and new can take part in without leaving their living rooms – watch our social media for details.
Our health management team, in particular, did a fantastic job of having all of the services that they usually provide in-person up and running online in a week. They are running supportive groups, mindfulness and even exercise classes through Zoom. Our hospital immediately set up an out of hours helpline for people living with HIV, who had questions about how to manage in the COVID-19 outbreak.
We have a small hospital (10 beds) and we have been able to offer 5 of these to the NHS for patients who can be discharged from acute beds, to make those available for COVID-19 patients.
Please help us share this support, donate and find out more on our website.
We would love to see how business and their employees are staying connected with nature, and hear how this is benefiting their business and staff during this time. We encourage everyone to share stories, photos and videos on our LinkedIn group.
Any help or advice on using LinkedIn more effectively and developing our new group would be greatly appreciated.
All Sussex Wildlife Trust events until June are cancelled and we have also closed all car parks, public toilets and visitor buildings. We will be reviewing this regularly as the situation develops - stay updated here.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for blogs, posts and activities to help stay connected to nature during this unprecedented time. It’s so important not to lose our connection with nature, and the health and wellbeing benefits it provides. We are constantly updating our website with new resources to help you, your colleagues and your family stay connected with nature. From Michael Blencowe’s entertaining and uplifting Wildlife Diary, our weekly Back Garden Bird Race, home schooling activities and Zoom backgrounds to rewild your meetings, there’s something for everyone.
Sussex wildlife Trust is working hard for nature at this challenging time but we can only do so with your support. If you are able to donate to our appeal please do. Thank you.
As one of Brighton’s loneliness charities, we are experiencing a huge increase in demand for our services right now. We are supporting vulnerable people to maintain social contact, have access to essentials and helping them to stay safe.
You can help by donating or volunteering. £10 could pay for a phone befriending volunteer to be trained to support an at risk person; you can donate here. If you’d like to volunteer, we are looking for phone befrienders and people who can help take shopping to those who can't get out. Sign up here to volunteer.
We have moved all our mental health support, advice and counselling services to digital or telephone support. Family breakdowns are a big issue right now and this is impacting on youth homelessness. Being able to support family therapy and youth counselling is now more important than ever.
We would be really grateful if businesses could donate to or share our campaign which seeks to support the 700 vulnerable young people that we support throughout Sussex. Self-isolation is difficult for all of us, but for the anxious young people we support, many of whom have mental health issues, it’s unbearable.
Please donate to or share our campaign.
We are also in desperate need of laptops/tablets for our young people and for our counsellors as they move to online support.
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If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk