Now Our Charity Is Born!

As most of you know this year is my go for it year! No more excuses, just pushing on with the various challenges I have, but with the very clear focus of making some real improvements to the lives of people affected by cancer. Working online has been a fantastic aid, and has helped people know more about the work I do. With the incredible community we have it is very humbling to  know that when I  do international presentations, people are already familiar with my work. My personal goal in anything I do is always to be as good as I can be. My site and social media is continuing to expand but I have always had a frustration, that I haven’t been able to do enough in a practical way to help people affected by cancer.

I considered that I was busy enough without the additional paperwork etc that a charitable organisation would give me. But then along came a chance discussion with Blair, who is the MD of Calls4Charities a mobile phone and air time provider. She had already encountered the impact of cancer in her personal life and wanted to help. It soon became clear that we had similar goals and frustrations with the current regimes in the cancer sector, and decided to give things a go! We wanted to ensure that we weren’t really duplicating services that were already there, and were keen for as many people to become engaged as possible. So our idea is that with low cost sim cards you can choose to support Chris’s Cancer Community. Then 10% of your spend will go to my charity to be used to help someone else. Of course you can also choose to support a different one too.

The more people sign up to the network, the more people we can help. The sim cards are all on 30 day rolling contracts so as flexible as they can be! With the help of Blair and her team we will have air time and phone deals that we can provide for people affected by cancer, including carers etc. The real win is for people who want to donate. I have received several donations already, from people who want some publicity, but many who don’t, and want to help our work. The donations are used to provide phones and air time to people affected by cancer, when the financial implications of a diagnosis begin to take their toll. I have people who want to help in particular ways, maybe selecting a tumour type or a certain hospital.

There are no marketing or administration costs, every penny raised will be used to help someone affected by cancer. Existing charities do what they do, which I can’t, but what I can do is understand what impact a cancer diagnosis has on someone, and hopefully help with some of the smaller things that will make a difference in their lives. Isolation is one of the biggest issues that we face when diagnosed with cancer, and mobile phones can help with that dramatically but can also be a financial burden if you are not careful. We would like to start with this issue and are open to suggestions how we can broaden our horizons.

The culture of collaboration is what I continue to preach and this work will be no different. Blair and I have a fabulous relationship, and it is important to us that the people who donate and the people we help become integral to what we are trying to do. One of my biggest issues with many larger support providers is that communication is so poor and the systems are very long winded. With what we are doing our responses will be quick and personal. For it to really work we need people to spread the word and use the sims to provide a regular income stream that we can use to help others. The more you talk, the more you will be donating, and painlessly too, what could be better? Currently this service is only available in the UK but we are promised that quite soon we will be able to provide it across the world.

Getting to this stage has taken a lot of organisation and hard work, but here starts the hardest part. Showing people why we are unique and what we can do is important and this is where you all come in! The greatest help would be to share news of our services with your friends and connections on social media. Please tell anyone you know who is affected by cancer that we may be able to help if required, and to get in contact through any of my channels. We don’t want anyone affected by cancer to worry that they can’t speak to their loved ones because of finance.

On Friday I was doing a really interesting presentation and when I mentioned what I was doing the staff gave me a donation. On the day before I met with an estate agent who asked me what I do for a living. I felt a little awkward, so I told him I help people and check out my website for more details. He did and told me that his next office raffle was going to be donated! I have found these last few days to be very powerful personally, to see the good that we can do, so my fingers are crossed that we can really progress with this work now.

If you would like to get involved by sponsoring some air time etc, please feel free to get in touch to see how we can work together. But more importantly if you know someone who could benefit from our help please let them know. None of this will work so well without your fabulous support and sharing, so a big thank you in advance!!