Founded in 1967, the British charity Crisis has made a phenomenal impact in helping single homeless people receive aid when they need it most. In 1972 the charity introduced a seasonal ‘Crisis at Christmas’ event which offers food, companionship, telephony services, health checks and a hot shower to all those alone at Christmas.
For our third year running, Gradwell were honoured to once again supply 89 VoiP and 58 Gradwell Mobile SIMS for free across 12 regional Crisis centres in London, Newcastle and Edinburgh. The volunteer led centres which opened from 22-30th December were expected to receive more than 4,000 visitors after 2013 saw attendance figures reach an all time high.
The donated technology was supplied in a collaborative effort with Aimar Foundation whose valiant efforts can be read more about here. With DDIs, conference room and fax to email services all sorted for the centres, it was truly humbling to see simple communicative tech make such a difference for those in need.
The results are of these efforts are slowly coming to light and Crisis have officially released a 4 minute video summarising the event with talking head excerpts from the guests themselves. Alongside the 7,200 mince pies, there was a total of 30,000 meals distributed over the week with approximately 3,600 guests estimated to have visited. The outcome of these efforts can be clearly seen in the video below and it’s humbling to see such humane, compassionate treatment of people in need.
The thousands of volunteers clearly made a difference, so a huge thank you to everyone involved for their efforts – especially the health experts who leant their expertise leading to 656 health consultations taking place throughout the week.
Here’s hoping that 2015 will be a turning point for social and political treatment of the homeless – charities like Crisis are imperative to the well being of our struggling citizens but with any luck the future will provide a way out for all of them.
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