Situations

I said yesterday that I was backing off until Monday 1st June from kicking the backsides of the media. Today I wan t to talk about SITUATIONS where we can bring Smiles but first I do need to talk about publicity and the media. Over the past 24 hours two significant things have happened.

Shearings Leisure Group has gone bust !

Shearings has names on all of its coaches, names celebrating the lives of many different people. Before doing this Shearings picked two people, Tom and Rebekah, to pilot the project.

Maureen and I spent a beautiful say at Shearings to christen Coach Rebekah. There is an entire chapter in Our Rebekah A Love Story From Our NHS dedicated to Coach Rebekah. Now we have lost that coach. The loss has hit me hard. Every time I saw a Shearings coach on the road I wondered if it was Coach Rebekah, If it was not then whose name was behind the love on that coach ?

I am going to give the story to the media and see if I can get some love and support from their failing position in our society.

Thames Valley Police intercepted a drug dealer on Oldbrook yesterday. They are calling him Deals On Wheels. I believe this is a dealer last summer the CEO of a major retailer and I first altered the police to the dealer's activities. I will not mention the retailer but it is big, very big and all of its branches are trading.  NO, I am not giving this story to the media but I intend to contact the CEO and ask if he will help promote, in Milton Keynes specifically, Our Rebekah A Love Story From Our NHS.

OK - that said can I give you a list of "Situations" where we could transplant Smiles. If we sell one million copies of  as Amazon say we should we can work within them all. If we can not then we have to decide what we can and what we can not do. PLEASE WILL YOU COMMENT ON FACEBOOK ABOUT WHICH PROJECTS YOU THINK WE SHOULD PRIORITISE AND WHICH WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES TO THINK ABOUT.

So what have we got ?

• SMILE CARDS - Patients in hospital - NHS Staff - Care homes - OPERATIONAL.
• PROJECT RONALD - Sending cards of love top families with a child sick ion  hospital, families staying in Ronald McDonald Houses - OPERATIONAL
• BLOOD AND ORGAN DONATION - while still promoting the practical projects are on-hold. ASAP we need to bring back TeenHeroMK and Melting Pot. However, we could quite easily launch SUPERHEROES4BLOOD - Cops4Blood which we were talking about before lock down - BinMen4Blood and Posties4Blood
• WEEKLY QUIZ - This is new, a weekly quiz for people in care homes, vulnerable people and anyone who wants a bit of fun. - OPERATIONAL
• PROJECT WOMBLE - this was something we were going to have operating using a community payback team to maintain the grounds by clearing the litter in University Hospital Milton Keynes. Unfortunately serious failings within the probation service messed this up big time. Prior to lock down we were talking with members of the government regarding its seriously failing justice system.
• PRISON REFORM TRUST - not specifically coming from the failure of the community payback organisers although it is a factor, we were alerted to failings by one former prisoner who was a regular guest at our weekly lunch of love and also we had a young man introduced to the lunch as a volunteer by the police/probation service.
• FOOD BANK - we have extensively promoted The Food Bank but were every Friday visiting one specific location taking gifts for the bonus table.
• HOMELESS ROUGH SLEEPERS - we have always supported homeless rough-sleepers. From November 2019 to lockdown we worked on a close individual basis with many friends at the Saturday lunch of love. There is more to ending rough sleeping than putting a roof over someones head and there is more to feeding a person than just putting food in their belly. We had so much happening and so many ideas for future activity, many ideas actually coming from guests themselves.
• DRUG WATCH MK - the way this developed was not the way originally intended but we were working with the police and schools, medical centres wanted to become involved and homeless rough-sleepers were helping. I became Chairman of Thames Valley Police's Community Forum and so much was on the agenda. While some projects are on hold some activities remain OPERATIONAL.
• SCHOOLS - I was part of Worktree but from this other projects, TeenHeroMK and drug support/awareness spun off.  Schools could become involved across many of our projects and there is much we could offer to schools.

So there we go. Over the coming week I will detail each area day by day but right now we need YOU to add your thoughts and comments.