Looking for volunteers and Trustees

As you know, we are always on the lookout for volunteers and trustees at the charity which provides technology to children in hospital. The power of networks…I was speaking to a friend and colleague at work, asking if she knew anybody who could help. She put me in touch with one additional person who is a senior technologist but at the same time, to another lady who is a senior COO. So met her and she further put me in touch with a lady who runs a group called as women technologists in the city. Wrote this email to them.

Hi XX
Thank you for taking the time to hear me out and thanks, YY, for the intro.

Here's the blurb as you requested.

I am the chairman of trustees of a 14 year old IT charity, IT4CH, which provides technology to long term and terminally children in hospital. What we do is to take equipment from firms like HSBC (we in HSBC provide 1000 units per year to this charity), refurbish them while training young adults (who are challenged due to drugs, domestic violence, psych problems, etc.) and give them a skill, and then deploy them to hospital schools and kids who are stuck at home. These young adults go forward and do jobs with pc repair or pc sales and we have got some very good feedback and results from this scheme. We also provide laptops for hospital teachers who are then better able to go about training bed / house ridden children. We have negotiated with Microsoft who provide us with all their software for £5/unit. HP provide us with equipment at half price, etc. Over the past 14 years, we have contributed thousands and thousands of PC's, laptops and other IT equipment to children in more than 250 hospitals here in the UK. We are the only charity here in the UK which is involved in this area and therefore we get referrals usually from hospital school teachers.

Here is the website. http://www.it4ch.com

Its a fairly small charity, we have one CEO, lots of volunteers (fund-raising mainly) and we have a turnover of average £100k. But we are now looking to improve and change direction. Rather than just give PC's and Laptops to the kids (dont get me wrong, its good), would like to see if we can extend our role and assist people undertaking research in educational technology assisting sick kids, better communications, perhaps some scholarship to research students, etc. etc. Here this email to you. We would like to expand the board of trustees (currently 4 members) to include senior technologists who are willing to help the charity with their technology vision, assist in fund raising and thus deploy technology to really help these long term sick and terminally ill children here in the UK. I understand you are connected with the Technologists in the City and if this can be forwarded on to them, I would really appreciate it.

These long term sick and terminally ill children in hospital usually dont have the bright sparkling eyes that one sees in children on the street, home and at school. They are in pain, they are in a hospital and they know "something" is "wrong" with them. But the worst thing is, they are not in touch with their friends, they are unable to talk, explore on the net and have the friends connectivity on social networking sites. They have grown up with technology. No mobile phones in the ward either. So one of the best moment's of my life is when we land up and give them a laptop or show a fully equipped school room with excellent PC's, their eyes light up. That moment is worth all of the volunteer time, money and energy that we put in.

If we can find any kind souls (Senior Technologists) who might be interested in becoming a trustee, I would be very happy to have a chat/coffee with them. If not a trustee, if anybody has old equipment that they are willing to donate to the charity or are willing to sponsor the charity in their Christmas card appeal, very happy to discuss that as well. Happy to provide more information if required.

Have a great weekend.

Looks like we have a winner here, we might get couple of new trustees and we might get some volunteers based upon what the lady from Women Technologists in the City. Who knows? This might help draw more women into the city and technology sectors

Quite chuffed indeed.