This is my 15th year volunteering or fundraising for Crisis, so you know what's coming here! Click the [Give Now] button or visit www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

Crisis this Christmas 2022

Each Christmas, many of us donate our time to provide warmth, companionship and vital services to people experiencing homelessness during one of the toughest times of the year.

Together, we help provide:

•     somewhere warm, dry, and safe to stay.

•     companionship and support from volunteer befrienders.

•     essential food and festive treats.

•     health and wellbeing programmes.

•     year-round support with training and education.

•     advice on housing, employment and benefits.

•     the chance to leave homelessness behind for good.

To date I’ve volunteered around 1200 hours across 99 nightshifts, and you’ve matched that over the years by donating £23,813 !!

£910 Target - Sponsor to match my 96 Hours Volunteering
This year’s fundraising target of £910 matches my 96 hours volunteering and will help fund 31 ‘places’ this Christmas.

Traditionally, I set our fundraising target to match my planned volunteering time at UK Minimum Wage. This year, that's 96 hours at £9.50 which gives us a target of £910 and will go toward funding spaces for more than 31 vulnerable homeless adults this Christmas.

Over £3,000 of what we've raised together in the past has come from people saying yes on that Gift Aid box. You can do this and still remain anonymous to me, and the UK government will give an extra 25% to Crisis - redirecting the income tax you've already paid and making your donation count for even more.

How much should you sponsor?

The short answer is, 'however much you’re comfortable with'. But remember to TICK the GIFT AID box, and it's like a 25% tip!

It helps sometimes to equate your donation with something specific, so below are some examples;

£7.60         + Gift Aid ( = £9.50 )
matches ONE HOUR of my volunteering at UK National Wage)

£23.26       + Gift Aid ( = £29.07 )
reserves ONE PLACE at Crisis at Christmas

£91.20       + Gift Aid ( = £114.00 )
matches ONE NIGHTSHIFT of my volunteering at UK National Wage)

£116.28     + Gift Aid ( = £145.35 )
reserves FIVE PLACES at Crisis at Christmas

£729.60     + Gift Aid ( = £912.00 )
matches ALL MY NIGHTSHIFTS volunteering at UK National Wage)

£917.76     + Gift Aid ( = £1,147.20 )
matches ALL MY SHIFTS volunteering at the London LIVING WAGE)

DON'T FORGET GIFT AID!

There’s more to read below if you’re interested in my experiences with how Crisis has changed over the past 15 (and 50!) years, but for now I wish you a fabulous Christmas and New Year, with hopes that you get to spend it with some of your dearest. Love from here.

George. xxx

Read my interview with Crisis - www.crisis.org.uk/get-involved/fundraise/fundraising-noticeboard/get-sponsored-to-volunteerlike-george/

Click [Give Now] at the top of the page, or visit www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

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What is Crisis?

Since the first ‘Open Christmas’ over 50 years ago, Crisis finds a warm, dry, safe space, gathers willing hands together, and invites in those who are experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping, to support them over Christmas.

What started with 20 volunteers in a derelict London church for a night grew to cover longer periods and hundreds of guests. It has grown into offering year-round support and training in a dozen UK cities for those recently experiencing homelessness, and to providing world-leading research that makes real differences to individual’s lives. Alongside that, Crisis supports housing, homelessness and rough sleeping campaigning, and holds government to account on its commitments.

>> donate at www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

What was Crisis like when I started?

My first Christmas volunteering was in 2008, and for those first few years Crisis was still using one or two derelict buildings donated by their landlords. Over a few days, an amazing volunteer setup team would transform these into drop-in daycentres or residential spaces, installing or reawakening heating systems and kitchens, building and plumbing-in toilets and showers to cope with hundreds of guests. They prepared spaces for camp beds, as well as for daytime services, activities, and meals.

Centres varied in capacity depending on size and layout of available buildings, most commonly with one or two small spaces for 30-60 guests and a ‘Main’ centre hosting 400-1,000 guests. Across a week each Christmas, 4-5,000 homeless guests were provided with support from hairdressers to dentists, podiatrists to addiction specialists, and with advice regarding work, training and housing
opportunities.

Alongside that, a warm safe place to be, three hot meals a day, fun activities, and Christmas companionship from each other and from up to 11,000 volunteers. In 2012, Crisis Christmas was the largest volunteering project in Europe, behind the London Olympics.

>> donate at www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

What’s Changed in 15 Years?

Since I've been involved, we moved away from using empty and derelict buildings and began taking over schools and colleges that were not being used over the holidays. These had industrial kitchens and large eating spaces; showers and toilet facilities for hundreds of people; classrooms easily used for health, therapy, and advice sessions; storage, IT and other infrastructure that Crisis could piggy-back onto. They were more spacious buildings with space to breathe (and working heating!) and generally much more dignified places to invite our guests into, and to work in.

Centre sizes came down, but sleeping spaces were often still large, often utilising gym or theatre spaces to sleep 50-250 guests alongside each other on camp beds. It was functional, but those of us volunteering on nightshifts in particular were very aware that we could improve guest dignity substantially by reducing those sleeping area sizes, and over a few years we found ways to introduce smaller 5-10 bed dormitories, though this was not universal and still used camp beds.

>> donate at www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

What has Crisis Christmas looked like since Covid?

In the context of a pandemic, it was simply unsafe to gather hundreds of vulnerable homeless guests into each warm, dry, safe centre, and then rotate hundreds more volunteers across three shifts each day (multiplied by 3-4 centres) to support them.

So in 2020 - across two weeks instead of the normal one week - Crisis block-booked rooms in a few hotels. Using small volunteer teams and using technology they delivered as much of a "Crisis Christmas" as was practical. Guests were largely in their rooms, with food and services provided to their doors or to provided smart TVs and tablet computers. There was no drop-in day centre availability.

Social interaction has been a huge part of Crisis Christmas, and one of the elements that guests always stress is the re-humanising power of conversations and activities with volunteers and other guests. The strict social distancing required was near-crippling to work with, but Crisis still managed to provide other hugely valuable things.

2021 repeated a similar model. New covid variants scuppered plans for communal meals and activities in the hotels and the full reopening of day centres, but we managed to provide a substantially more ‘open’ experience for guests than the previous year.

And then, at the last minute, a way was found to extend into the new year for three more weeks, for over 250 guests, to stay on with Crisis. They had been assigned individual case workers who could now build further connections with critical year-round services.

That extended Crisis Christmas project created a record number of verifiable successes, helping hundreds of people into accommodation the day that it closed its doors. The statistics are compelling;

•     63% of last year’s guests left with improved housing situations.

•     74% with positive move-on plans in place.

>> donate at www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.

Crisis Christmas 2022

Using your donations and alongside new funding, an extended model similar to last year’s will run to make 150 guests part of a five-week project into January to try and repeat those successes. This is supported by St Mungo’s, the GLA, and No Second Night Out, and will particularly target those who are new to sleeping rough.

The main project will run across two weeks again (16 days), providing individual rooms for around 450 guests across three hotels, and the reopening of four London day centres. Hundreds of specialist and general volunteers will bring back much of the communal activities, services and support that Crisis has always offered.

For thousands of guests we will provide the Christmas that Crisis is loved for, and support real results to improve circumstances for vulnerable people experiencing homelessness right now.

It’s true that much looks different than it did just a few years ago; running over more than just Christmas week means better access to partnerships across the homelessness sector but reduced availability of volunteers and donated spaces. Alongside Covid risk assessments and completely different needs of running in hotels, this means our volunteer teams are much smaller, and much more of the project relies on paying for space and expertise that used to come solely from direct gifts.

This evolution is vital and is proving to be hugely effective, and your donations are more crucial than ever to help make it all happen.

Times are tough, I know. As always, please take good care of yourselves and those close to you. There are other ways to extend a hand and offer a little dignity to those nearby when you’re able to and whether you’re able to donate a few pennies this year, be proud that together we’ve already raised almost £29,000 since 2008!

Much love.  George. xxx

Read my interview with Crisis - www.crisis.org.uk/get-involved/fundraise/fundraising-noticeboard/get-sponsored-to-volunteerlike-george/

Click the [Give Now] button at the top of the page, or go to www.justgiving.com/georgelondoncc22/donate.