Baylis & Harding Support Children In Need #Ad

During the pandemic charities have noticed a real drop in their income.  Partly that’s because it’s not been possible to do those usual fund raising events.  It’s not just direct fund raising like say, Macmillan’s Coffee Mornings which usually take place in September.  There’s also loss of income from things like sponsorship as no one is running marathons for charity this year and the like.  Those charities that involve opening up places to the public like the National Trust have seen a fall in visitors, partly because they’ve had to restrict numbers.  There’s also the knock on effect of not being able to open the shop or the tea room depending on what the current restrictions are.  Many will have increased costs too, if only around cleaning, providing hand sanitiser and putting in place perspex screens.

Many charitable organisations have had more demands for their services.  There’s been more demand for food banks, more need for mental health help and debt counseling.  Even if they have reduced services there are likely to be fixed costs like rent and bills that will be difficult to avoid. Obviously, it’s not all doom and gloom because many local communities have stepped in to help out.  Our road has run a food bank collection run each week since the start of lockdown one back in March.  People buy something for the food bank with their weekly shop and leave on the doorstep at the appropriate time for it to be collected.  Each week we get a Whatsapp message to tell us what they are particularly short of and many people factor that into their shopping for the next week.

There are other ways to help out too.  We can support companies that provide a donation to a good cause from their profits.  This way we can do our normal shopping, but give to charity indirectly as we go along.

Baylis & Harding is proud to support BBC Children in Need this year with their new ‘dotty’ hand wash! A donation from all sales is being made to the charity.  It’s fragrance is strawberry swirl which is a lovely cheerful scent that reminds me of summer.  Kids will love the packaging and hopefully that will encourage them to wash their hands more (very important to be handwashing regularly at the moment after all). I think seeing Pudsey’s smile and the rainbow colours of the bottle will cheer you up as you wash.  The limited-edition handwash is currently available from Amazon, Next and Boots.