Giving Tuesday - 1st December 2020

Giving Tuesday is celebrated on the Tuesday following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is a global campaign, in over 60 countries worldwide, to celebrate the amazing work that charities undertake to help those in need and to make life better.

This year Giving Tuesday is on 1st December 2020

This is also the start of our Big Give Christmas Challenge where we are hoping to raise over £4,500 to continue supporting young people across Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire who are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young people like ‘R’ who was due to begin their intervention as the March lockdown started. However, with careful planning and discussions with R’s family and the professionals involved with ‘R’ we quickly moved to an online intervention that was supported by a resource pack created by One-Eighty and delivered to her house.

‘R’s’ targets focused on equipping her with emotional regulation strategies to support with anxiety around lockdown and going back to school when restrictions allowed, and to build confidence and resilience to improve her self-esteem.

Through emotional regulation strategies and mindful visualisation techniques, we encouraged ‘R’ to explore her emotional responses to different situations. Supported by the case team, she was able to use a five-point scale to identify and indicate to adults when her emotions were heightened. ‘R’ was given tasks to do at home such as creating a stress ball and a calm jar to support this. To support ‘R’s’ transition back to school, we discussed the concerns she had about SATS and starting secondary school, allowing her to explore the emotions she might feel, and think about calming strategies she could use.

To build ‘R’s’ self-esteem, we explored the importance of making mistakes for learning using famous examples of success after failure, and things that were made by mistake. (Did you know that Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were a by-product of a failed attempt to make hospital food!)

Those around ‘R’ have reflected that this work really helped to support ‘R’ with her anxiety about lockdown and returning to school and they were able to continue to use the strategies suggested to support her going forward, reminding ‘R’ of what she has learned. She was able to successfully return to school in September and continues to use these strategies in her learning.

To celebrate Giving Tuesday, why not donate to our Big Give Christmas Challenge. You can make a donation as an individual, trust or business – you just need to be able to make payment with a debit or credit card on the online Big Give website.

You could also share this blog with your friends, families and colleagues. Don’t forget donations up to £2,250 will be matched funded so you will be helping to ‘double our impact.’

Every gift, big or small, will make a huge difference.

THANK YOU!