The Capital Christmas Appeal 2008

The Capital Christmas Appeal is a seasonal tradition and has been for over 30 years. With this year’s Christmas Appeal we have decided to make a lasting impact on the Capital by helping one very special project...

 That project was Missing People, the UK’s only charity that works with young runaways, missing and unidentified people and their families. And with their help we decided to promote and fund a free text service to help missing and runaway children for one year.

The aim of the Christmas Appeal was to support all of the costs involved with setting up and maintaining the Runaway Helpline text service. Specifically: the cost of the texts to the Runaway Helpline, providing trained staff and volunteers to answer the texts, and promoting the free service and Runaway Helpline across London.

Missing People’s Runaway Helpline was launched in 2005 at Capital and is a 24 hour confidential helpline for runaways, offering help and advice to young people who have run away from home or care, or who have been forced to leave.

Last year 68,000 calls were made to the Runaway Helpline from young people in crisis situations, with conflict the primary concern in 24% of cases, homelessness in 21%, physical abuse in 8%, bullying at home in 4%, domestic violence in 3%, and sexual abuse in 2%.

From November 2008 until January 2009 we asked for your help in many ways...so how did we do?

We asked you to donate your old mobiles phones and hundreds of you collected – from schools to local authorities to cafes and shops. Over 4000 phones were donated and with every phone being worth a minimum of £3 that means we raised over £10,000 with the phones alone.

Over £5000 was also made in donations with another £2750 collected by the fantastic team and commuters coming through Waterloo and Westminster stations.

We created a limited edition Ray Winstone ringtone which cost £1.50 with an average of 90p coming straight to the charity and over 9000 of you downloaded our special Ray ringtone!

We also had the very last pair of front row tickets to the the party of last year – the Jingle Bell Ball. We auctioned off them off with Johnny and Lisa and longtime supporter Pimlico Plumbers came in with the winning bid of £10,000 before giving the tickets back to us so that two children from one of our projects could attend and meet the stars backstage.

In total, thanks to your donations and support, we raised over £47,000 to help fund the Runaway Helpline text service for the first year.

Thank you for supporting the Capital Christmas Appeal and our campaign to fund a Runaway Helpline text service. The service is already up and running and your generosity has already helped save a child and reunite a family this Christmas:

Andrew, 15
Andrew contacted Runaway Helpline by text in early December saying he was feeling very low and really needed some help. After 2 or 3 texts with us he told us he had ran away from home 2 months ago and was really scared about contacting his family as he had left it so long. With some encouragement he asked the helpline worker to pass a safe and well message to his family as he really didn’t feel he could contact them himself yet. The Runaway Helpline counsellor called his Dad and passed on the message. Dad was really pleased to hear that he was safe and left a really supportive message back for him hoping he would contact them himself directly as they had been so worried about him.  Runaway Helpline was able to pass the message back to Andrew who was pleased and relieved to hear this and said he would contact them in a few days when he was ready.
NB: Please note that the name and some details have been changed to protect the anonymity of the young person.

Let’s hope there are many more over the months to come.

Please check back soon for more updates concerning the Runaway Helpline text service.