No call for help goes unanswered

For many people December and the festive period is a time for friends, family and celebration. But for many people it can be the most challenging time of the year. A time of stress or loneliness and when these feelings are much more acute that usual.

Central London Samaritans is fully aware of the need to be there throughout Christmas time and as such we will again be open 24 hours a day every day throughout Christmas and the new year. Volunteers that come in for shifts on christmas day can experience some very difficult conversations, but also plenty of messages of gratitude from those that really need to speak to someone.

Please remember that your kind donations have helped to keep our service running around the clock, whenever people need to speak to a listening volunteer.

This time of year is also a wonderful time to get outside and be a part of our community. Going outside of the branch is a great opportunity for us. We get to raise awareness of the service we provide and remind people that we will again be open throughout the festive peroiod. And we get to offer emotional support in situ for anyone that would benefit from being able to speak with someone there and then - it's constantly surprising how many times we get the chance to have a really good conversation with someone while we're out and about. And we get top work with some great choirs and musicians while we shake our buckets to raise the valuable funds to keep the service running.

We recently had a wonderful evening at St Pancras station where the brilliant Popchoir sang beautifully for a full two hours while we were able to meet with the public and raise funds and awareness.

And then this week we were at Charing Cross station from 7am to 7pm and were able to bring in soime wonderful choirs and our volunteers had a great time meeting the public.

We also had a lovely evening with our friends at Pianoworks, who are based in Leicester Square and their extremely talented performers sang and played and danced all evening and allowed us to talk about the service we provide while the patrons happily donated valuable funds while requesting songs for the team to perform.

The end of the year also allows us to evaluate how our teams and projects have fared over the year. Our homeless team finished on a total of 1713 conversations with members of our local homeless community at local food drops. We are constantly looking to make sure we support the homeless community as much as possible as we are the only service they can regularly use to access emtional support.

We also ran emotional health workshops for 3,270 school pupils in 2019. This is essential work as young people are more aware than ever of mental health issues. In our workshops we get the pupils to talk to us about the pressures that they feel, the coping mechanisms they use and who they can talk to, both in and out of school. We then talk to them about spotting signs of poor mental health in themselves and their friends and share listeningtips for them so that they can help a friend who is struggling.

As always we are enormously grateful for the kind donations we have received through GlobalGiving. Through donating to Central London Samaritans you are helping our listening volunteers to be there for anyone that needs us, 24 hours a day throughout the festive period and throughout the year.

We wish you happy and peaceful holidays and a prosperous new year.

Links:

• Link to our most recent Impact Report

July is the month when we focus all our awareness raising and fundraising activities and the 24^th July (24/7) is when we host ‘The Big Listen’ events to get out and meet the public. In London our focus was on Waterloo Station where approx. 200 volunteers from across London came together to raise awareness and funds for our charity. We were at the station from 7am to 7pm so it was a long and hot day but with lots of musical acts helping to keep the public entertained we had a lot of fun. 

In Limbo

In August we had the great pleasure of working with Sevenarc Productions on their new play called ‘In Limbo’. This was written with the guidance of Samaritans media guidelines for dramatic productions. It features James, a male character who lives with suicidal thoughts and feelings and we see him go through a series of flashbacks that have led him to the point of wanting to take his own life. It was an enormous pleasure to be able to work with the writers, who also made up the cast. The work was performed for the first time ever at the Camden Fringe and was extremely well received with nearly every seat sold across five performances. The cast were extremely generous in mentioning our support at the end of every performance and we were in the theatre reception ready to collect money after the performance. Sevenarc are now looking at potentially taking In Limbo on a tour of schools and other institutions and we hope to be able to support them with this.

Thames Bridges Trek

Our amazing volunteer Trudie completed the 25k Thames Bridges Trek to raise money to keep the branch open around the clock.

Afterwards Trudie said: "I so enjoyed the walk, the weather was just right for walking and the atmosphere was fantastic. I met some great people raising money for all sorts of charities, big and small. Whole teams of people walking together, or people on their own walking for a loved one or a tiny charity close to their heart. 4,000 people took part and we criss-crossed the Thames over
16 walkable bridges from Putney Bridge to Tower Bridge covering 25k. It’s a fascinating, ever-changing walk and I really recommend it if anyone fancies doing it next year!

Notting Hill Carnival

For the first time in a long time Samaritans had a presence at the Notting Hill Carnival. This event took place over the bank holiday weekend and we were able to raise awareness of our service to a whole new audience. After being invited to attend by the organisers, our volunteers from across the London region were able to hand out cards and leaflets and chat to Carnival goers. The carnival organisers were extremely complimentary about our volunteers and we will be meeting with them soon to start planning for our presence at the event next year.

The Office for National Statistics has recently realised new data on numbers of suicides.

There were 6,859 suicides in the UK and Republic of Ireland in 2018. The suicide rate's increased in the UK by 11.8%, the first increase in five years, and the rate for young women is now at its highest on record.

 Having seen this worrying trend increasing in the last year, it becomes essential to raise awareness of Samaritans at all levels so that people know they can reach out to us if they're going through a rough time.

We are pleased to see that many companies from different industries are interested in the work we do. We deliver talks on emotional wellbeing and active listening during World Suicide Prevention Day.

This not only gives us a great way to raise awareness but we can charge companies for public speaking events so it’s also a really good fundraising opportunity.

These most recent figures show we still have much work to do to achieve our vision that fewer people die by suicide.