My Charities for the Year

Lord Mayor’s Blog 26
These are my charities for my mayoral year year 2009/2010. If you would like to support them you can do this in various ways: By cheque made out to ‘The Lord Mayor’s Charity Appeal’ and sent to The Lord Mayor’s Parlour, The Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham B1 1BB or online at
http://www.justgiving.com/lordmayorbirmingham
Further information can be obtained from the Lord Mayor’s Parlour on 0121-303-2040 or by email to lordmayor@birmingham.gov.uk
The Birmingham Fund for Pancreatic Cancer Research: The objective is to establish a new charity that outlasts the current Mayoralty - and indeed runs until that dread affliction is mastered. While there’s been steady progress with several forms of cancer, for pancreatic cancer the five-year survival rate following diagnosis forty years ago stood at just 3%. Today that rate is - well, just 3%. Yet the disease is treatable on those occasions where the cancer is detected early enough, and the primary focus of the fund will be on research, conducted in Birmingham, into improved diagnostic methods.
The Lord Mayor’s Engineering Scholarships: A fund to support the study and practice of Engineering in Birmingham - at various levels and in a range of forms. As a Council we recognise the unmatched contribution that engineering has made to the City, and I am sure we would all agree that it is vital that Birmingham remains prominent in this important field in the future. So, alongside other initiatives, we will encourage and enable young people from Birmingham to take up engineering both as a course of study and as a fulfilling future career. Encouragement will also be offered to progress developments in vital newer areas such as Clinical Engineering.
St. Basil’s: The inestimable work of this charity with young people providing them with support services, advice, mediation and guidance and tackling and preventing homelessness and its consequences has helped to transform very many young lives here in Birmingham. However, in today’s society there is no let-up in the need for the very wide range of services so ably provided by St. Basil’s, and we will be making a big effort during the year to support this most worthy cause.
WAITS - Women Acting In Today’s Society - is a very important charity in a diverse city such as Birmingham, and WAITS is doing outstanding work enabling women to address issues and overcome barriers, combating isolation and providing help to increase the involvement of women in the public life and business of communities throughout the city - from which all of us will benefit. Here again, we know that there is a continuing need for the extensive range of activities carried out by WAITS, and that there are many who are yet to benefit, and a great deal more work still to be done.