Sunshine Smile Crew 2020

As we come to the end of 2019 THE SUNSHINE SMILE CREW is standing high. Standing high buy with a mega big powder keg of potential we could light in 2020 then by May when we celebrate Sunshine Smile Day and move into our fourth year of operation we could be touching so many, many more lives making people

smile, be happy and spreading love. But to light that powder keg of potential we need more people to help us light the fuse.

We have 59 members of our FACEBOOK group - we need 59,000.  If every member brought in all of their friends and they then brought in all of their friends we would have no difficulty at all achieving that figure.

We have moved from organising our own events to supporting others as they do their thing. Not quite, I guess, we still have our own "things" which we will keep but we do need to up our game of support all over. In a moment I will take you through what we have on our agenda and share my thinking.  Add YOUR thinking to strike the match and explode our powder keg.

I call myself a COMMUNITY ACTIVIST and during 2020 I want to firstly enhance that role but to find within THE

SUNSHINE SMILE CREW more people who will shout to the world and raise awareness for the causes we are involved in.

We are NOT, and I never want us to be, a charity - we are a support team.

From Day One all costs for everything we do have been met from my own pockets. In 2020 if we are to realise our potential my pockets have to be more deep BUT NOT BUY TAKING A SINGLE PENNY FROM ANY GOOD CAUSE OR BY DIVERTING MONEY INTO METING COSTS. I need help to turn such things as my writing and my YouTube channel into resources we can use to deepen my pockets.

So now let's look at what we have on our agenda. This is going to take several thousand words so please scroll through to areas close to your heart.

• Supporting families with a child sick in hospital, working with Ronald McDonald House Birmingham.
  
• Showing love for our homeless rough-sleeping friends and a wider ranger of vulnerable adults.
• Loving our NHS
• Promoting Blood & Organ Donations - Melting Pot and TeenHeroMK
• Working with teenagers in school.
• The Food Bank
• Loving our planet and Project Womble
• Loving animals
• Playing music
• Toilets

We need to look at:

• How we can develop the YouTube Channel
• The books of Max Robinson
• Our website

And we need to look at what we do on Sunshine Smile Day 2020.

Rebekah pictured left in Guys Hospital, London, left it in her will that we should support Ronald McDonald House Charities in her memory.

In YEAR ONE we ran lots of fund raising events and made around £5,000 but without the help more ideas never happened than those which made cash. We ran Secret Santa and focused our support on

Ronald McDonald House Birmingham rather than trying to be everything to everybody. In YEAR TWO we ran a musical tombola in Birmingham and again Secret Santa.  On Christmas Day i dedicated every track on my radio show to a different family in Ronald McDonald House Birmingham. YEAR THREE Secret Santa is running, this year we will include a Christmas Card to every family and again my Christmas Day radio show will be for the resident families.

So what about 2020 - what do you think ?

My family was one of the first to benefit from the very first Ronald McDonald House in Britain. Today there are 11 houses who by the time the year is out will have supported more than 6,000 families. Across the world there are 365 houses in 64 countries.

If I make a suggestion what do you think ?

2020 Secret Santa continues with Birmingham.

Each month we select a house in a different country of the world. We send to that house enough of our Smile Cards for every family staying in the house. We feature that house on our SUNSHINE SMILE CREW page and here on our blog. Could we get children and grandchildren to write a letter or draw a picture to send to a family ?  The last edition of my radio show Tuesday Terrific Tunes each month is dedicated to that house.

What do you think ?  What ideas do you have ?

Now I reckon I could do that myself but it would be 
so much better is someone else wanted to take on the task. Could that be you ? Hit me on Facebook or drop me an e-mail: dashford566@gmail.com

We have shown love for our homeless rough-sleeping

friends since Christmas 2017 when many of us made donations to homeless charities in memory of LEONITE Jimmy Owens.

I think right now I have spoken to more homeless rough sleepers than any other layman in Milton Keynes. When I say layman I mean someone who is not involved in a charity or local authority - not that the later has the faintest idea about the plight of a homeless rough-sleeper.

There are three factors which are common to every case.

1. Something life-changing brought about the friend

losing their home. It could be the friend being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could be bad luck. It could be pure stupidity. 2. Milton Keynes Council failed to offer the required help to prevent the friend becoming homeless. 3. When help is offered people tend to fail

to appreciate the complexity of the case, the need for multi-agency support. Putting a roof over someone's head does not solve the problem.  We have supported Milton Keynes Winter Night Shelter and will continue to do so, currently we are processing a gift of around £70 from supporters for the work this charity does. However, working with DREAMSAI we are hands on and in direct contact with friends.

Every Saturday from 12.30pm to 1.30pm Dreamsai throws open the doors of Unity Park Bus Station - The BUZZY - for friends to come in for a meal. Guests do not have to be homeless, they can be people who are a bit down on their luck, they can be feeling lonely and wanting company.

During the morning Dreamsai members have cooked meals in their homes. Julie is Queen Of The Kettle making cups of tea and coffee.

Mariuz is HEAD COOK AND BOTTLE WASHER. While my job is to sit and chat with guests.

We have a freebie box of simple bits and pieces.

We put out teddies for adoption. We hand out our smile cards, fun bits and pieces as well as smile stickers. LOOK WHAT MARIUZ DID TO HIS PHONE WITH STICKERS ! The podcast from my DAVE'S DISCO radio show is played to help fill the room with fun.

While all this is happening other members of Dreamsai take Food For Sai out on THE WALK OF LOVE delivering meals to homeless rough-sleepers on the street.

Working as a part of Dreamsai is so lovely. There is a lot more we need to do. We need you to get involved.

We need simple little gifts to put in our Freebie Box. We need clothing, shoes, jumpers and coats. Guests ask us for these. 

We need someone to work alongside Yours Truly talking to friends.

We need someone to lark about handing out smile cards and stickers.

Would you join Dreamsai ? Hit me on Facebook or drop me an e-mail: dashford566@gmail.com

This is a simple project but one with powerful potential. We want to use social media to find new members, supporters an volunteers for University Hospital Milton Keynes. We want to find members for Healthwatch Milton Keynes. We have a Facebook Group ready and waiting but right now nobody to manage it. We need to get back to my Monday radio show featuring MONDAY MEDICAL MOMENT. I think we need to get our Smile Card out into the hospital, particularly into A & E and the relatives room in The Intensive Care Unit. During 2020 Project Womble will be working in our hospital.

Our National Health Service is Britain's greatest asset yet to a politician it is nothing more than a football. Only the finest people work in the NHS and I firmly believe our hospital to be the finest in the country. Actually every town and city across the country has the finest hospital in the land. We need to celebrate and than every single person who works within our NHS.

We need someone to co-ordinate this project, to make the above ideas work at an ever higher level. Particularly we need to get the Facebook page operating. Once we have all of this happening why can't we expand the love to more and more hospitals and health areas across the country.  Could you help male this happen ?

This is VERY EXCITING. We have two projects running - TeenHeroMK and Melting Pot.

University Hospital Milton Keynes uses 6,000 pints of blood as it lovingly care for its patients.

TeenHeroMK aims to find 2,000 teenagers 17 to 18 year olds (You can donate blood once you reach your 17th birthday.) who will each donate one pint of blood three times a year. Working with Oakgrove

School as our lead school the first Teen Heroes will start donating in February 2020. We will then roll the programme out right across Milton Keynes to repay our amazing hospital's debt to the blood donor system.

It will take us into 2021 before the first 6,000 pints are banked but as we more and more Teen Heroes sign up we will be waving the flag to encourage other hospitals and schools right across the country to follow our example.

We also have Melting Pot reaching out into non-white ethnic groups primarily to promote organ donation. Secondary to this we are promoting organ donation.

We are working with Dreamsai which already has a blood donor programme which we are now promoting. In 2020 we will be helping the Indian Community advance organ donation.

We have met with our local Imam and once a fatwa is published in the Spring we will be working with the Islamic Community to advance blood and organ donation.

These projects are running themselves, we do not really need anyone to co-ordinate what is happening. BUT - a question - ARE YOU A BLOOD DONOR ?  Would you please post your story on THE SUNSHINE SMILE CREW facebook page to encourage those who are not donors to sign up.

This is not a SUNSHINE SMILE CREW project but something I am personally involved in.

If I had not joined Worktree we would not have Dreamsai and The Walk of Love, we would not have Melting Pot and we would not have TeenHeroMK. Who knows how many more doors

Worktree will open in 2020. Check out this organisation and get involved.  I tend to give time to one session a week, some visit schools many times a week while others just attend once a term. When I made my first school visit I thought it way my role to inspire the teenagers - NO THEY INSPIRED ME. During 2020 I would like to inspire many people to become Worktree volunteers.

TO BE CONTINUED......

LOTS MORE TO SHARE - THIS IS JUST A START.

We are NOT a charity and I do not want us to be. We are a support group. We do not handle money, every single penny goes to and is managed by the group we are supporting. EVERYTHING comes out of my pockets. I do not want to change that but if we are to explode our potential we need to make my pockets a bit deeper - a lot deeper.

We have two areas we could immediately engage to find the money we need, need without impacting in a negative way on our powder keg. We have a YouTube Channel which is making sod all. We have he books of Max Robinson which are making close to sod all !


I have run a YouTube Channel for four years. We have 42 subscribers and something like 300 videos BUT basically the channel is doing sod all !

Compare this to a 25 year old guy in Tottenham, London who posts reviews about Chicken Shops. He has 675,000 subscribers and has achieved 49.6 MILLION views. He gets commission based on the adverting YouTube puts on his videos. Let's say he receives 100th of a penny for each view that means he has made £49,600. Actually he has made a lot more than that but I would settle for £49.6k. 

Thing is I do not have a clue to take our tiny presence on YouTube to the higher level and make money. As we develop The Silly Old Man - The Geriatric DJ into a campaigner surely there is the potential to make money via YouTube. Thing is I do not have a clue how to do this and do not have the time.

While chatting to a group of teenagers within Worktree one lad said how he had his own YouTube Channel. It occurred to me that if we want to develop our YouTube channel we need far younger minds than mine. So could we find one, two or perhaps a small group of young minds to take charge of this area and make some money from our YouTube Channel we could use within our projects. 

How about this ? Could we find these minds among some university undergraduates burdened with student debt and tuition fees ? Let's split the YouTube income 50/50. Half to the team managing the channel and half to explode our power keg of potential.

There are Amazon millionaires! Writers make fortunes from their book sale. I am not one of them - so far this month (I am writing this part of the page on Thursday 12th November) I have earned 29p.  As well a royalties Amazon puts up a vast monthly prize fund for its top 100 authors, we are talking millions.

With no disrespect and keeping modesty in check my books are every bit as good as the Amazon Millionaires !  They are.

My book The Bridge House could rival Downton Abbey.  The Wild Adventures of Di Central Eating, if illustrated, I believe could be a best seller. This is not so much a child's story but an adult's view on a child's life.

I'll leave it there - if you want to read all of my books

CLICK HERE. The reason why I am not making money from my writing is simply because I do not promote the books.  I have always written for enjoyment without any wish to make money.  I have not been writing a lot over the past couple of years, I have been too busy co-ordinating our various projects but within our Rocking For The Food Bank there is something which will force me back to the role of Max Robinson author.

We do have on my library shelf the potential to make 

money, even if its just a couple of hundred pounds a month, we could use to explode our powder keg.

So what about it ?

Can we find someone with marketing skills to take over and manage the library shelf of Max Robinson ?  Could that be you ?  As with YouTube I would split the income 50/50. Half to my pocket to explode our powder keg and half to the new Marketing Manager.

TO BE CONTINUED......

LOTS MORE TO SHARE - THIS IS JUST A START.