The London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) has begun a search for Volunteer Performers to participate in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of this summer’s Paralympic Games. Successful applicants will perform in front of a packed stadium and a worldwide broadcast audience.

Artistic Directors Jenny Sealey, Bradley Hemmings and Kim Gavin are looking for 5,000 enthusiastic and energetic volunteers to fill roles as dancers, actors, percussionists and general all-round performers.

If any London members are interested in auditioning for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you have until 13 February to register by completing the online application form.

Jenny Sealey said: ‘Anyone with a positive attitude, huge amounts of energy and a willingness to perform in front of a stadium audience and to millions of people around the world should get onto the London 2012 website now and sign up’.

Grand finale

Applicants must be able to participate in up to two auditions in February and March, up to three rehearsal sessions each week from June, and a number of all-day rehearsals in the three weeks leading up to each Ceremony. All of these rehearsals will take place in east London.

Find out more about the terms and conditions, and register quickly!

If every New Year you resolve to give something up, only to crack within the first couple of weeks, how about for 2012 you take something up instead?

January provides the perfect opportunity to get stuck into something new – and what better time to get involved with volunteering through Media Trust?

It’s a great chance for you to use your professional skills to help others and make a difference. Share your marketing expertise with charities, social enterprises and community groups and help them get their messages across to others.

Here’s just one example of how Media Trust helps in London

Solidarity Sports is typical of many of the groups that come to Media Trust looking for support – they’re a small charity working in disadvantaged areas of London with the aim of getting more children to enjoy a healthy lifestyle through sport and good food.  Media Trust have matched them with a number of volunteers in the past, including experts from Google who helped increase their social media presence; volunteer photographers who took pictures for their website and marketing materials; and the Membership Marketing Manager of Arsenal FC who helped them with a marketing strategy for their fabulous ‘Kids Cook the World’ healthy cookbook.

Sean from Solidarity Sports says: “We simply do not have the funds to employ professionals for this kind of thing so we are very grateful to Media Trust for putting us in contact with them. Thanks!”

Solidarity Sports are currently looking for additional support with marketing, so if you’re interested, let Media Trust know and they’ll put you in touch with them.

Don’t just take it from the Media Trust – this is what the volunteers have to say:

“I must say that this is a good experience for me. I’d forgotten just how much knowledge and expertise I’ve gained over the years. It’s a pleasure to share this expertise with charities that are deserving and will truly benefit in this economic climate.  Media Trust has identified a great way of helping charities to engage with the media and I’ve really enjoyed my experience so far.”
Angie MacDonald, freelance marketing consultant

“Though I wasn’t very sure how much help I could be at first, the process of working with the charity I was assigned to was a very fulfilling experience for me. My skills meant I could help the charity improve their copy and make it more engaging. It was particularly satisfying to learn that my input did make some difference and that my skills could be put to good use for a charitable cause.  I just wish I’d got involved sooner!”
Tina Tan, Clinica.co.uk

What are you waiting for? Time to try something new!

For more info, email mediamatching@mediatrust.org, call 020 7871 5654 or go to www.mediatrust.org/media-matching-2

Happy New Year!

Those spare hours every month. What do you do? Shopping, cleaning, or becoming a volunteer career development coach and changing the life of a person who is long-term unemployed?

We all know how devastating unemployment can be for an individual, their family and local communities. People who have been looking for work for a long time can face many barriers to finding and keeping a job. These include lack of recent work experience or the right skills, physical or mental disabilities, lack of confidence and loss of self-esteem.

This is where the role of career development coach comes in. Career development coaches are volunteers who give one-to-one support to unemployed people on their journey from being out of work to finding a job, and keeping it.

As a career development coach, you will support unemployed people through the Careers Development Group (CDG) Work Programme, giving them regular individual coaching and mentoring, as they look for work and then begin their new job. By providing a friendly ear, and drawing on your own experience and expertise, you will be able to help jobseekers build their confidence and overcome any barriers.

The role of the career development coach is also about your own personal and professional development. Coaching is a great skill to have and you’ll get training and regular support from CDG. You should also find that the role fits easily into your life. You only need to commit for a minimum of between two and ten hours each month either inside or outside of normal office hours. 

Reach hope they’ve whetted your appetite and you want to find out more. You can download aninformation pack at www.reachskills.org.uk, ring us on 020 7582 6543 or email cdg@reachskills.org.uk. Please contact them before 7 December 2011.

The Women in Marketing Awards and Events supports the charity Women for Women International.

This film was first shown at The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Women in Marketing Awards ceremony on 3 November 2011.

In this film, supporters including Annie Lennox, Todd Fisher and Joan Burstein speak about Women for Women International’s work and explain why they support the organisation.

Find out how to sponsor a Woman and more about the work of Women for Women International.

The ‘hairy’ season is upon us again and The Prostate Cancer Charity is calling on every man out there to grow a Mo to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer and change the face of men’s health. Last year, the Movember campaign roused 110,000 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas who collectively raised an impressive £11.7 million in the UK alone!

The Craft and the Pride

The Mo Season officially launched in London this month, at the eclectic Village Underground in Shoreditch, and the Charity are proud to share the theme for this year’s campaign – The Craft & The Pride. A country gentleman, living off the land, sporting his moustache, his badge of honour. While the early days of Movember may be itchy, the Charity are confident you will find a legion of men in your workplace to share your furry journey ahead.

Register

The concept is simple: Be clean shaven on the 1st of Movember, grow a Mo for the month, and ask your friends and families to sponsor you! You must register your participation online as this will allow your sponsors to donate to you quickly and securely and qualify you for prizes draws and incentives.

Go on London, Grow a Mo!

Do you know of any charities, social enterprises or community organisations in London in need of support with marketing, PR, media or communications?

Perhaps you work or volunteer for a small London charity? Maybe you’ve helped fundraise for a local community group in the past? If so, let them know about the free support they can access via Media Trust.

Media Trust is working with Trust for London to specifically provide advice, guidance and practical support in media and communications issues to small charities across London. They can help with everything from developing a social media strategy (or simply setting up a Twitter account) to designing an annual report, providing a professional photographer for a fundraising event or making a short film.

Media Trust is particularly looking to support projects working with disadvantaged groups – the homeless, people with disabilities, those living in poverty, people looking to get back into work, older or isolated people, and refugee and asylum seekers.  If you know of any groups who could use this offer of support – do point them in their direction – or let Media Trust know their details and they will contact them.

Or, if you’d like to offer a little of your time and marketing expertise to help a local London charity, let Media Trust know – They’d love to find you your perfect charity match!

To find out more, contact mediamatching@mediatrust.org or visit the Media Matching site for more information.

Thursday 3rd November marked the 300 days to go milestone, and with London 2012 just around the corner preparations at ParalympicsGB are really hotting up.

The important date is yet another vital stepping stone on the journey that hundreds of British disabled athletes are taking, hoping to reach the qualifying standards to be awarded a place in the ParalympicsGB team that will compete on home soil next year.

ParalympicsGB have already announced five sailors as the first athletes to be officially selected as part of the team following their hugely successful IFDS World Championship campaign in July, where the two and three person keel boats claimed gold and silver respectively. By July 2012, a further 295 odd athletes will have been selected to give a 300 strong team who will march out into the Olympic Stadium on August 29 next year to a roar of British support.

The British Paralympic Association, the organisation behind the ParalympicsGB team, is working hard to ensure no stone is left unturned in its support of British athletes. Paralympic athletes are incredibly talented, committed and determined – truly parallel to their Olympic counterparts. Although things have progressed a lot in a short time, they still however don’t receive the recognition they deserve and the general public still tend to view them as disabled people having a go at sport, rather than elite athletes who happen to have a disability.

Apply for tickets in December

ParalympicsGB are a registered charity and rely on the support of fundraisers to achieve their charitable objectives. Help support the British team through one of their fundraising events such as Deloitte Ride Across Britain, the British 10k London Run, Run to the Beat or Gold Challenge. And if you haven’t yet applied for Paralympic tickets, a second round of public sales will begin in December. Make sure you’re there to cheer on Britain’s finest Paralympic athletes by registering for tickets at www.tickets.london2012.com

There’s a clear trend in corporate and public sectors to get staff engaged and involved away from their desk to feel re-energised, reinvigorated and bring new experiences back to the day job, so to show how skills-based volunteering benefits volunteers, Media Trust spent a few minutes with David Watson, senior campaigns manager at No.10 Downing Street and a volunteer speaker at their recent Marketing essentials seminar.

As David explains, there’s a move towards “getting civil servants out of the office and into the community: to be civic servants, participating in the community”, so a Media Trust presentation that outlined how his expertise was going to help charities directly, and have a lasting impact on their beneficiaries showed him a different, and very practical, way to support an initiative he believed in. “It was really powerful because I could see the benefit for the people coming along. I’d already been doing some voluntary work and this seemed an ideal way to bring that together.”

Events are a great way to see the immediate impact of your volunteering because your beneficiaries are there in the room, asking questions and reacting to your words. As David says, “I was really impressed by the way the delegates engaged with the session: you can see them visibly learning”. His experience was energising, taking him back to the office on a high and with real benefits to show for his time: “I’ve got a whole bunch of new contacts, new presentation techniques from other presenters, and most importantly feel I’ve helped people from some fantastic organisations do their marketing better – and so helped them do more social good.”

With feedback from the event’s participants including “The best bit of the event? David’s guidelines”, “the speakers were very informative and engaging”, and “I’ll be taking back new confidence and understanding about marketing”, there’s no doubt David’s warm and fuzzy feeling is deserved.

Media Trust’s well-established programme of communications workshops and conferences enables charities, community groups and social enterprises to develop skills, increase knowledge and build confidence in all aspects of communications.

Professionals from all sectors volunteer their time to share their knowledge with non-profit audience so that through improved communications they can achieve better results for their cause. It’s a mutual benefit, because their volunteers are learning too: delivering thought-provoking presentations, developing engaging workshop exercises, explaining tricky concepts, chairing discussions and encouraging participation.

What could you learn by contributing to Media Trust’s events programme? Take a look and see where your skills fit. If you’re interested, please register as a volunteer. Alternatively if you want to talk through how your skills might help, or want to attend any of the events yourself, get in touch at events@mediatrust.org or call 020 7871 5600.

Aspire will be the first charity to benefit from ‘Campaigns for Good’, a new initiative run by Media Trust and JWT London to give UK charities the chance to receive help and advice for a communications campaign to run in 2011. Aspire works to provide practical solutions and opportunities for people with spinal cord injuries.

The judging panel - Tony Quinn, Head of Planning at JWT, Jeremy Bullmore CBE, Claire Jackson, Board Planning Director at JWT, and Gavin Sheppard, Director of Marketing and Communications at Media Trust.

Charities across the UK were invited to apply for the opportunity and Aspire was chosen fro m four finalists following a presentation to a panel, including Jeremy Bullmore, Tony Quinn, Head of Planning at JWT, and Gavin Sheppard from Media Trust. Aspire will partner with a team of JWT Planners in a session to develop their campaign strategy and generate ideas. Media Trust will also provide ongoing volunteer communications support, resources and training over three months.

Chris Field, Director of Fundraising and Marketing at Aspire said: “Every eight hours someone in the UK is paralysed by a spinal cord injury. Much of our work involves providing practical support and funding for wheelchairs, allowing those affected to live independently. However we currently lack the funds to assist 50% of the people who ask us for help and we hope that the campaign we develop with the help from JWT will raise awareness and encourage more donors.”

Gavin Sheppard, Director of Marketing and Communications at Media Trust, said: “We received a huge number of entries from some amazing charities and short listing them was really difficult. Aspire is an extremely inspirational charity and we very much look forward to supporting them and helping to make their future campaign a success by drawing on JWT London’s expertise.”

If you want to find out more about how your skills and experience or those of your team could be harnessed to help charities like Aspire and 100s of others, get in touch with Media Trust at volunteering@mediatrust.org.

With less than one year to go to the London 2012 Paralympic Games, the British Paralympic Association (BPA) – responsible for preparing and delivering the ParalympicsGB team to the Games – is at a vital stage in their preparations. They have been planning for the London Games ever since, in 2005, it was announced that London would be the host city in 2012, with the knowledge that a home Games presents a once in a lifetime opportunity for Paralympic sport in the UK.

For the BPA, a home Games means more than the chance to win a bucket load of medals (they won 102 in Beijing and have come second on the medal table at the last three Games). A home Games is a chance to make the public sit up and take notice of the Paralympics, seeing them for the elite, fiercely competitive sporting event that they are, and ultimately changing the way the public view disability by helping audiences to see sport first, disability second. But planning for one event over a number of years is challenging, and the BPA have had to put together strict timelines to ensure the key deadlines and milestones have been achieved, working in partnership with a number of agencies to do that. At this stage in their preparations, it’s all about putting their carefully laid plans in to operation to ensure they succeed in 2012.

Celebrate International Paralympic Day – 8 September

Thursday 8 September is International Paralympic Day. Join the celebrations in Trafalgar Square with a jam-packed day of sporting demonstrations from ParalympicsGB and international athletes, including Ellie Simmonds and Oscar Pistorius.

It’s a great chance to find out about the 20 sports featuring in the Paralympic Games before tickets go on sale on the 9th. You can head to Trafalgar Square from 8.15am, or tune in to Channel 4’s ‘That Paralympic Show’ on Saturday 10 September.

Paralympic tickets go on sale – 9 September

Key to success is public support. The BPA want to see full stadium, packed with red, white and blue with British fans screaming in support of the home nation. In order to mobilise the public, it is vital that communications to them go out at the right time. Too soon, and the conversation loses its relevance; too late, and the window of opportunity will be closed. Vitally, tickets for the Paralympics go on sale on 9 September, with applications closing on 26 September, and throughout 2012 you will hear more and more about the British athletes going for gold in 2012 as the BPA plans come to life.

Show your support for ParalympicsGB and be there in 2012. To apply for tickets, visit www.tickets.london2012.com