On a serious note

Today I received our Child Protection Policy, which was written specifically for Child’s i Foundation by Mark Williams-Thomas. Mark is a leading child protection consultant, and the first person I asked for advice when I was developing the idea. Mark spent 15 years working as a police detective, and has had considerable experience of running major paedophile investigations. (He also advises on Waking The Dead which is one of my favourite BBC dramas, so how could I resist?)

Child Protection is critically important to the project and we need to put in place a strategy to mitigate the risks from day zero – it is our responsibility to safeguard our children from harm and abuse. Mark has put together a comprehensive policy covering the Home, volunteer guidelines and editorial policy for the website. Once we are out in Uganda we need to tailor the policies and ensure we work within Ugandan Legislation and Child Protection systems.

We are so very lucky to have Mark on our team, and grateful that he’s giving his time and expertise for free.

Thank you Mark.

Top PR firm on board

Hurrah! We have a PR Adviser. Cross that off of the to do list (#11). as we have secured Andrew Bloch. Andrew set up the hugely successful PR agency Frank PR whose clients include Ben & Jerry’s, Blackberry, Costa Coffee, Virgin Money, Heinz and Walkers

I had never met him before but found him on a Facebook group and sent him our Proposal we arranged a meet up and he generously agreed to come on board. Thank You Andrew

We went through the PR Strategy, discussed the positioning of our charity in the media industry, and went through the talkability of the project – if you are reading this blog, then the strategy is working…

The Bodyguard meets Jack Bauer

Today I received our Risk Assessment and Security Analysis from Will Geddes of the ICP Group.

I worked with Will on The Race when he taught Lock Stock.. star Nick Moran & Atomic Kitten’s Jenny Frost evasive driving. He is a Security Specialist, and advises the rich and famous, governments and royal families on issues of counter terrorism (think Jack Bauer in 24), kidnap (Proof of Life), & close protection services (think The BodyGuard) . We need to seek advice on security issues, as we are ultimately responsible for the safety of all our children, staff and volunteers.

ICP are going to review and assess the site, work in partnership with Mark Williams-Thomas on staff vetting and verification, devise the compound security policies and procedures and emergency response procedures.

Security Report

I can now sleep safely.

Storming

Today we had a creative brainstorm to discuss the tagline and mission statement of the Child’s i Foundation. We were very lucky to have Adil Abrar (strategist) and David McCandless (writer) at the session, both are brilliant and have worked on campaigns for Amnesty.

Brainstorm

After half an hour spent explaining the project, Adil (quite rightly) pointed out that we have lots of USP’s but what we really needed to work out were our key messages – what were the reasons behind setting up the organisation. Why was I doing this project?

I immediately remembered Abraham, a baby who died of Meningitis aged just 4 months old.

Abraham

He had been abandoned in the taxi park when he was two months old and bought to an orphanage in Kampala. As I was stood burying Abraham under a mound of mud in an unmarked grave what really upset me was that, in Abraham’s short life, no one had ever cherished him. He was abandoned, he was an orphan and then he died. No one ever noticed his first smile or loved him like he was their own child, no one paid attention to his rash and more tragically, no one really truly missed him when he died.

Abraham's Funeral

These babies have no one to fight their corner. Abandoned in rubbish tips, toilets, taxi parks or by the roadside, they have no one and it is up to us to not only keep them alive but to give them a life. I don’t want children to grow up in orphanages, another statistic to add to the 2 million orphans in Uganda. I want them to be loved by their very own family.

Some really good ideas came out of the session – Adil suggested the project was like a co-operative and people could own a share in it similar to myfootballclub. I am really excited about the collaborative nature of this project because I really want people to feel like they are part of the project. If people give us their hard- earned money I want to be able to tell people exactly where their money is going – that’s why the Internet is the perfect tool to engage and inform our supporters.

One of the ideas for a tagline which came out of the session was ‘We make families, not orphans’. I am still not decided, so I’ll keep posting ideas up on the site until we come up with one we like.

Raising Funds From The Rich

I spent the day with 1,000 professional fundraisers and multimillionaires at a conference called Raising Funds From The Rich, advising how to get the wealthy to part with their money. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to ask for cash – we’re careering into a recession, an enormous amount of wealth has been destroyed, banking has been wiped out and I’ve got my hand out asking for nearly £1 million.

But we got one piece of inspiring advice from Lord Gavron, which was that we need to discourage the rich from spunking money on expensive cars, houses, clothes and jewellery. Now Michelle has had a brilliant fundraising idea called ‘Bling It Back’ where we ask celebrities to donate us something they don’t want we can auction it on eBay. Send us your suggestions of who we should send letters to, and we’ll get writing.

We now have CHARITY STATUS, here we go

Sent: 08 October 2008 12:08
To: Fraser Simpson
Subject: CHILD’S – I FOUNDATION – REGISTERED NO: 1126212

Dear Mr Simpson

I am pleased to inform you that the above has now been registered under registration number 1126212 . Written confirmation follows by first class post.

Please note that the information may take a few days to appear on our website.

As a part of the Commission’s drive to continue to improve the service that it provides to customers we would be grateful if would take a few moments to complete the attached Customer Satisfaction Survey

We have been given Charity Status!!!

I love the Charity Commission. I will give them top marks in their customer survey.

Now all we need to do is raise the cash…