Photo shows some of the members of St Michael & All Angels Charities Group on Charities Sunday, October 16th 2022, when our three charities were West London Welcome, Swinfen Telemedicine and The Upper Room.
Left to right: Paula Nelson, John Clark, Margaret Hill, Simon Tuke, Andrew Mitchell (chair). It followed a successful wine tasting supper in the Parish Hall the night before. Another member, Ros Lister, can be seen with the Chiswick Book Festival charities here.
In 2022, the St Michael & All Angels community raised over £30,000 for outside charities and further sums for St Michael & All Angels Church (PCC) and the St Michael & All Angels Bedford Park Trust, which are themselves charities. See details below.
SMAAA Charities Group Report 2022
The Charities Group said farewell to John Clark, who stepped down as Chair at the end of 2021 and as a member of the Group at the end of 2022. We are profoundly indebted to John for his contribution over many years and, at a personal level, I have been hugely grateful for John’s encouragement and support during the handover. We hope to welcome several new members to the Group this year to increase our ‘bandwidth’ and enhance our fundraising efforts during 2023.
Over the course of 2022, we raised a net total of £16,212.70 for our three partner charities – The Upper Room, West London Welcome and Swinfen Telemedicine – and more than £1600 for our Lent Charity (Deaf & Blind Aid Lanka – DABAL).
In addition, £8250 was raised for the three Book Festival charities – InterAct Stroke Support, Read for Good and Doorstep Library, thanks to the hard work of Torin Douglas and his team. A tremendous effort on their part. Read more here.
The St Michael’s community also raised over £2,000 for Combat Stress on Remembrance Day through the very successful ‘Cosmo’s War’ event, over £1,000 from the ‘Big Sing’ for the DEC Ukraine appeal in June, and additional sums for Christian Aid and the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal, making a grand total of £30,000 for the year.
Further sums were raised to support the mission of St Michael & All Angels Church (PCC) and the St Michael & All Angels Bedford Park Trust (which are themselves charities) through the Bedford Park and Chiswick Book Festivals.
Finally, I would like to mention two SMAAA members who made an important personal contribution to charities with which we are associated. Mark Critchlow and Alyson Mitchell raised significant sums for Swinfen Telemedicine and WaterHarvest (one of our former partner charities) through a sponsored swim and a debut London Marathon run respectively. Well done!
Our funding relationship with West London Welcome has now come to an end and we have been delighted to see them develop over the last few years into a strong and sustainable organisation with an extensive network of patrons and donors. Our new partner charity for 2023-25 will be Crosslight Chiswick, which provides advice and help for those facing debt problems. We will continue to support the Upper Room and Swinfen this year and the Hogarth Youth Trust, which provides services to young people in Chiswick, will be our Lent Charity.
Finally, we are enormously grateful to the Church for its support and to the St Michael’s community more generally for giving so generously of their time and money (not to mention significant donations in kind to The Upper Room, West London Welcome and Ealing Food Bank) during what was a very difficult year for the UK economy.
Andrew Mitchell, chair, SMAAA Charities Group
February 2023