Recycling at Birmingham Christmas Shelter 2009

We have received the following information from our ace-recycler, Ted, at BCS 2009.

"Apparently more consumables were ordered than previously.

Weren't the meals wonderful?! :)

Especially as they were produced by different chefs and volunteers on different days; excepting Roy's consistency and Yvonne's

BUT WHAT GOES IN MUST ...

A maxi-bin was delivered, a number of green wheeled bins arrived (mixed recycling accepted). Paper and card baled or bagged.

Even the most careful management would not prevent some cooked food waste, bound for the maxi-bin.

Mr Phil Brook of Birmingham Waste Department appreciates our project and our management of "waste".

STATISTICS

The maxi-bin - blacks sacks containing cooked food waste; non-recycle-able plastic wrapping; mixed material items e.g. cardboard container with metal base and rim; and the three nasties - black plastic and polystyrene and tetra paks; and grot. Not filled beyond level. Hooray!

10 wheeled bins mixed recycling metal and foil and plastics

2.5 bins separated green, brown, clear glass

3 dozen bales/bags card and paper (and old clothes)

12 half bags of compostable raw food

:( I am still unhappy at so many black sax.

During this year new legislation may appear to regulate container producers :)

My thanks to a few occaisional helpers without whom, etc. I "collapsed" on the 30th as, I expect, did many of you.

WELL DONE ALL.

BEST WISHES JAMIE."

A huge thank you to our volunteers

This is just a quick note to say thank you to all our amazing volunteers. The Trustees believe that this was a wonderful Shelter, with our new services, especially IT and Samaritans, working really well because of the energy and commitment of our volunteers.

One of our guests left us a letter of thanks that said:

"On behalf of all of us. To Birmingham Christmas Shelter. To all Trustees, Volunteers and Security Staff. On behalf of all the Homeless, Vulnerable, lonely people. We would all like to say a sincere thank you for all your hard work, dedication, patience and kindness for all you have done to make our Christmas a better experience.

"Most of us have had serious problems in our lives and we really do appreciate everything. We would also like to thank those people who have donated food etc. to this charity.

" To Jamie a big thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all your hard work. We wish you the best.

"This is from all of us."

In the next few days we will be uploading some videos to our Youtube channel and we will be blogging about the Shelter. In the meantime, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Michael Wilkes, has blogged about his alternative Christmas, including a visit to our Shelter.

Videos of our Christmas Shelter for 2008 are on-line at our Birmingham Christmas Shelter YouTube channel. You can also see some photos from the Lord Mayor's visit on our Birmingham Christmas Shelter Flickr site.

BCS09: open for registration

We are now open for registration for our inductions. Please see our volunteer letter on our downloads page. You will need to scroll-down - it is called *volunteer letter 2009_2.pdf*
To register please read through the letter and then send us an email clearly detailing the following information:

* Name
* Address
* Contact telephone number (home and / or mobile)
* Email address
* First choice of Induction date
* Second choice of Induction date
* The shifts you would like to work

Inductions will take place on 5th and 12th December at 10am and noon, and on 16th December at 7pm. You must attend an induction if you wish to volunteer.

As per the details in the letter, we receive a huge amount of enquiries between now and Christmas and we would really appreciate it if you direct any queries via our email address, enquiry@openchristmas.org and not via the Trustee mobile. Emails are checked daily and we will always respond to you.

We are very excited about Christmas 2009 and we could not do it without your support and commitment - we really look forward to seeing you at your induction and of course at the Shelter this year.

Please remember to bring a piece of photographic ID to your induction as we will be asking you to check the details we hold on our database. Once you know which induction you are attending (we will confirm this to you), please remember to allow plenty of time to sign in so that inductions can start promptly.

Broadening our understanding of our community

We had a great meeting yesterday at St Georges - almost a full-house, and the Trustees are really grateful to our wonderful Area Supervisors for their commitment to BCS. The meeting discussed some big issues, namely: the extra services and space we would have this Christmas, including Samaritans, Citizens Advice, Housing Advice, Library Services and IT skills; the provision of clothing at the Shelter for our guests; and the impact of the recession on our numbers this year - we need to enter into discussion with our friends around Birmingham to see the impact on their services this year.

We also had a great discussion with Philippe from Phoenix Futures about drugs awareness and the impact of classified and declassified drugs on our guests. Given that drug dependency, from alcohol and nicotine, to heroin, crack cocaine and methadone does impact our guests this was a critical session. Philippe handled our individual and collective (mis)conceptions really well, and enabled us to engage with the related psychological and mental health issues.

It will be interesting to see how this affects our behaviours over Christmas and our ability to relate to our guests.

Street Collection for BCS, and a note on fundraising

Yesterday we held our second street collection around the City Centre. Jamie had arranged everything with the Council and after he came down with Swine Flu, Ali organised our logistics on the day. However, alongside these two, a big thank you also goes to Roy for all his help in bagging and counting up the cash, and to Jo for staying to the end with him to help out!

Overall 25 volunteers went out to collect in locations from the Hippodrome to Snow Hill Station. We had 17 volunteers collect in the morning and 8 in the afternoon, and we are really grateful for our friends' energy and commitment. Although this was fewer volunteers than last year in all we collected £811.44 and this will make a real difference to our work at Christmas.

Our notable collector of the day was our new Trustee, Steve Johal, who raised £119.99. Great stuff!

One extra point-of-note is that our Fundraising Committee has this year worked so hard to exceed last year's total. We have been rewarded with two very positive responses, from Npower and Cadburys, and three more charitable trusts are considering our application to them for help.

Our "rainy" Dog walk was again a success, raising £631 to date. Zurich Insurance has also made another valued contribution this year.

Forthcoming events include Peter Brownjohn's "flower celebration" and Medini Richardson's "Bag packing". Lynne has done a fantastic job as Fundraising Committee Chair in raising valued funding for BCS and contributed to the largest single donation of £7000 in BCS history.

With Richard Hall's Lyke Wake Walk contribution, we have raised almost £11,000, before donations.

This is an amazing effort and we are so grateful for everyone's efforts.

Roll on Christmas.

Lyke Wake Walk for BCS

Steve and Richard managed to raise £950 on their epic 40 mile walk across the North Yorks Moors. You can view the video on the BCS YouTube site.

Dog walk for BCS: July 2009

A very big thank you to Lynne Murray and Neil Foster for organising our annual sponsored dog walk in July 09. Despite a very rainy start, our dedicated dog walkers were keen to get going along the Rea Valley! From Terrier to Alsation, the dogs had a great time running around Cannon Hill and playing in the river - the walkers had fun too! Thank you very much to everyone who came along and supported the event.

You can check out some photos on our BCS Flickr feed