Policy into practice - Raising money for charity
Anne Longfield
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The issue: Once again, last week saw a successful Red Nose Day and a variety of celebrity challenges have put charity fundraising at the forefront of everyone's minds.
Young people are often among the most enthusiastic and willing to part with their time and money to do their bit for charity.
Giving Nation's Campaign Tracker 2007 research report found that 80 per cent of eight- to 13-year-olds would give to a charity when asked. Indeed, encouraging young people to be involved in this sort of activity provides more benefits than just the money raised. In particular, their participation helps develop teamwork skills and brings out their creativity.
CASE STUDY 1
Giving Nation is a project from the education charity Citizenship Foundation, which promotes engagement in and understanding of the third sector for young people. It has provided free curriculum packs to three-quarters of secondary schools and runs an annual online awards programme that recognises and promotes young people's charity and community engagement.
The programme gives young people and teachers access to online resources to support their involvement in charity, volunteering, campaigning and social enterprise initiatives. In addition, the Giving Nation Challenge, a six-week funded programme, provides grants for schools to set up and run their own charity or social enterprise. This programme is currently in place in 400 schools across England and hopes to expand rapidly.
One team of 12- to 14-year-olds from Hammersmith in west London who were worried about gang crime in the local area set up open mic nights, giving young people somewhere to go. The money raised from ticket and drink sales was then donated to charities working against gang crime.
CASE STUDY 2
The charity Children with Leukaemia has launched the Paper Plane Challenge - a new fundraising activity for young people. Schools and youth organisations host a fun-filled paper airplane show where children of all ages can design, make and fly their self-made paper plane.
Prizes are awarded for the furthest flown, the best decorated and the most inventive design, and for every child taking part a donation of £2 is made towards helping young lives.
With a pack filled with letters for parents, posters, paper plane templates, stickers for each child as well as winners' certificates, groups are fully supported to get their fundraising challenge off to a flying start. To date, a total of 49,721 children have signed up and participated in the Paper Plane Challenge.
Anne Longfield is chief executive of 4Children
