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

Lyke Wake Walk for BCS

On Saturday 20 June 2009, Richard Hall [BCS Trustee] and Steve Chaplin [mountain goat] will be attempting the Lyke Wake Walk across 40-ish miles of the North York Moors from Osmotherley to the sea at Ravenscar. The walk has to be completed within 24 hours and will most likely require a 4am start at Osmotherley. Oh dear.

The route is liable to be extremely boggy and in the event of more extreme weather we'll probably defer the walk until the Sunday or Monday. However, the walk will be done!!

In order to make this apparent 15-hours of lunacy more worthwhile, we intend to walk the walk to raise funds for Birmingham Christmas Shelter, in particular to pay for Christmas gift bags for our guests and for provisions for this year's Christmas lunch.

So if you would like to sponsor us that would be wonderful. To do so, please:

1. click through to the Birmingham Christmas Shelter secure on-line account;
2. click on the make payment link; and
   
3. in the "donation details" page, please use the text-box "Please pass the following instructions to the charity" to type that your donation is for our "Lyke Wake walk". This means that we will be able to track how much is raised by Steve and Richard.
   
   Please also leave a comment here for us, under this blog entry, with any advice, guidance, messages of support, and a note of how much you have sponsored us for [so we can keep a tally]. Simply click on the "comment" link to the right of where it states "Posted by Richard Hall".
   
   We will make a BCS YouTube video of the walk - so if you want to see me having a beer at The Lion at Blakey Ridge [around noon on Saturday], or crawling to the sea at Ravenscar [around 10pm on Saturday], you'll have to wait for that video.
   
   Thanks for reading and for your on-going support for Birmingham Christmas Shelter. This walk is part of our fundraising committee's attempts to enhance what we do for our guests at Christmas. Your support is invaluable and hugely appreciated.

Next BCS Volunteer Get-Together

Our very own dynamic Area Supervisor, DJ Phil, has been busy testing all the bars, clubs and restaurants in Birmingham city centre and has decided that 'The Green Room' cafe-bar is worthy of our patronage for the next BCS Volunteer get-together. It is in the Arcadian centre, close to where we first met in January and February and is directly opposite the Hippodrome Theatre.

We will be there from 17:00hrs on Sunday 10th May '09 and all BCS Volunteers are welcome. As always, no need to confirm, just turn-up, with or without friends and/or family - all are welcome. In the meantime, please give a little thought to what you would like us to organise for forthcoming evenings - salsa dancing is still on-the-cards, as is 'flower-arranging the DJ Phil way'.

As always, DJ Phil and Ellis P are always happy to field any questions etc..

Dave Morris rows the London Marathon for BCS

On April 26^th at 10:00am, when the London Marathon starts, our friend and Birmingham Christmas Shelter donor Dave Morris will start rowing on a Concept2 indoor rowing machine at the Virgin Active gym in Solihull. He is aiming to complete the full 26 mile distance (or 42195 meters for the Europeans among us) in under 3 and a half hours.

He has been training for over 20 weeks and has covered over 800,000 meters in training including several half marathons and one row of 20 miles. He is carrying an injured arm ("my own" says Dave) which will need surgery 10 days after the event!

Funds raised will be split as follows; 50% BCS, 25% Welsh Air Ambulance, 25% Cancer Research.

All pledges of donations should be emailed to Dave at Morris301@btinternet.com

Crisis planning £2.5m centre for Birmingham homeless

Mike, Jamie and Ali attended a reception hosted by Crisis and SIFA fireside on 12 March at the Rep. The two organisations were flagging the fact that Crisis is planning a £2.5m centre for Birmingham's homeless and this is due to open in 18 months.

As far as we are aware there is no plan to open a Christmas Shelter and so our work will continue. However, we do plan to monitor this situation and to work more closely with partner organisations in Birmingham. At the very least we hope that we can engage our guests with more skills and outreach-related developments, as appropriate.

Birmingham Christmas Shelter on Twitter

It's nice to see Birmingham Christmas Shelter now on Twitter. Follow us at BrumXmasShelter. We'll use this to publicise our plans and the shelter during 2009.

BCS, SIFA Fireside and Crisis

The Trustees of Birmingham Christmas Shelter have been invited to a reception about a proposed partnership between SIFA Fireside and Crisis, under the banner of Skylight Birmingham. We hope that the reception will lead to a dialogue about the provision of homeless services, year-round, in Birmingham.

One of our main aims for 2009 is to extend our co-operation and engagement with outreach organisations, in order to offer better experiences for our guests at Christmas, and also to engage the vast expertise of our networks of volunteers. We believe that through partnerships with local and national organisations, like SIFA Fireside and Crisis, we can capitalise on the community spirit of our volunteers and guests and do better things.

We'll let you know how we get on.

Recycling at Christmas

Over the years a target for BCS has been to reduce the amount of waste that we produce during Christmas week. Ted, our top recycler, speaks about this in our first YouTube video.

This year we used one medium skip, and managed to recycle:

1. 30 bundles of paper/card;
2. 10 bags of cleaned and crushed metals;
3. 10 bas of plastics [it is frustrating that many plastics, especially those that are black, are not accepted];
4. 3 bags of glass;
5. 1 bag of crushed foil; and
   
6. 4 bags of compostables.

As ever, tetrapacks caused Ted some distress as they cannot be recycled. Maybe next year, huh?

Christmas Shelter 2008

We had a great Christmas Shelter last year. Some of the highlights can be seen on our Birmingham Christmas Shelter YouTube channel.

Some headlines follow.

1. We had the following number of guests eat or sleep over with us each day.

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner	Male sleep	Female sleep
23rd		45	66	41	2
24th	46	60	90	80	5
25th	90	145	110	97	6
26th	93	99	98	80	5
27th	85	110	102	86	7
28th	105

2. We had the following number of guests use our services

Service	No. of guests that used service
Showers	92
Manicurist	16
Hairdresser	15
Citezens Advice	7
Chiropodist	23

3. We had some good media coverage locally and nationally, and Liam Byrne, Cabinet Office Minister, made an announcement about volunteering whilst he visted us on 27/12/08.

The Trustees of BCS would like to say a huge thank you to all our volunteers and service-providers who made this such a wonderful Christmas experience.