WHAT'S NEW


What's New
postings for 2012, 2013 and 2014!! I really must sort things better! And move some of these into annual updates where you might expect to find them.

I really, really must make time to update "What's New"!! Better still find an easier way of updating this site and then update it. The dates and posts are not up to date but this site still gives the right gist of what we do and who we help, and who help us achieve our objectives.

2014

Time is still flying - so we really must be enjoying ourselves!

September / October 2014
David exhibited some of his photos in the Pinner Arts Week, Photographic section hosted by one of the Week's main sponsors - Kubera Wealth - Financial & Lifestyle Planning with a difference. This was another resounding success, for us and for all the exhibitors and visitors, with more of our calendars and even more A6 photo cards sold for the benefit of Frustrated Communication.

September 2014
For the third year we had a stall at the Pinner Village Show, organised by the Rotary Club of Pinner - look under "What we do" to see what they get up to. Everyone who came along to the show had a great time and we made many new friends. We again launched our 2015 Pinner Charity Calendar and sold quite a few bits and bobs.

July 2014
Once again we were in Waitrose Harrow Weald Community Matters Scheme (little Green Tokens) for the whole of July. Each Waitrose Store gives £1,000 each month split between 3 local charities - the split depends on the customer's votes with these green tokens. A great and generous scheme. Thank you Waitrose and all our supporters - this appearance added £280. Since 2011, we have been in 6 times in 4 different stores and raised a total of £1,700 to support our local projects - in Pinner and the surrounding area.

20th + 21st June Collection
14 of us spent time on Friday and Saturday to collect outside our local Sainsbury's supermarket. We collected for three named charities - all helping local people with communication difficulties. These were: ADHD & Autism Support Harrow, the Templeton Centre, Northwood Hills (Alzheimer's Support Group) and the other local charities we support through Frustrated Communication. We collected a total of £550.86 and should receive Gift Aid through the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, which should take the total up to £688.58. A big thank you to all who helped with the collection and to Sainsbury's and the generous members of the public of Pinner for their donations. Thank you all.

May
David gave talks to members of the Pinner Local History Society and to members of Elthorne-Hillingdon Rotary Club on the background of Frustrated Communication who and how we help and some of the impact our grants have. The talks were well received and I am pleased to say I heard no snoring. Thank you to all who attended for your interest in what we are doing.

Ongoing
We have produced feedback forms, which it is hoped will provide more helpful information on the impact and effectiveness of the grants we make. They have been well received by the charities and organisations receiving our grants.

Visits to various recipients of our grants to chat through how things are going and how useful the equipment, services, training or special projects funded have proved. We're getting some great feedback and really making a difference - with the fantastic enthusiasm of those working for and running the charities and organisations we have chosen to support. I must organise the website to make more of a feature of this aspect.

2013

Time is flying - so we must still be enjoying ourselves!

The fundraiser we spent the most time on through 2013 was our Pinner Charity Calendar. For our 2014 calendar Terry Farr from Friends Restaurant at 11 High Street, Pinner, HA5 5PJ once again, very kindly, provided 12 fabulous recipes for the back of the calendar pages. And two local ladies provided old postcards of Pinner, one dating from 1902 to reproduce as detachable postcards on each page. Pat Clarke, local historian, author and member of the Pinner Local History Society put us right on the facts about Pinner's past.
Visit the pages on our website to see what the 12 scenes looked like then and now and see which local shops helped us sell the calendars.
We sold 309 of the 350 we had printed and made a profit of £1,211.

Leading up to Christmas we sold more of our Charity Christmas cards.
All the proceeds are added to our distributable funds to increase the grants we make.

Once again we attended Pinner Panto Evening on 28th November 2013. A great family evening with the High Street closed to traffic - children's rides, food and entertainment - Bands, Choirs, Morris Dancers, Fancy Dress, Santa's Groto, Face Painting and much more. We wandered the streets selling a few more of our 2014 Charity Calendars. It was a lovely evening and we were more successful than in the previous year.

November 2013 Coffee Morning
Another successful coffee morning! Great fun catching up with friends and supporters and for David being surrounded by ladies who... go to coffee mornings. We sold more calendars, cards and items from the bring and buy tables. Thanks to all the regular helpers and supporters.

September 2013 Collection outside Sainsbury's in Pinner
for the Templeton Centre + Frustrated Communication - local grants.
Again Sainsbury's Pinner Store, management and staff allowed us to collect for two days, this year for the Templeton Centre at Northwood Hills, the local Alzheimer's Disease support Group, plus our Frustrated Communication local grants to help people with communication difficulties. 8 helpers joined us - including two from the Templeton Centre. We collected £510 and should top this up with a Gift Aid refund under the new Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme.

14-Sep-2013 the Pinner Village Show
The Rotary Club of Pinner, organisers gave us a fantastic pitch - many thanks. Again a great day out for all the family. The weather was OK - not as good as 2012. We sold more of our Pinner Charity Calendars and a few other bits and bobs. Again great to see friends and supporters having a good time. Great entertainment, food and activities for all to enjoy.

September 2013 Coffee Morning
at the United Reformed Church in Northwood Hills
We were approached at last year's Pinner Village Show by the organiser of Northwood Hills' United Reformed Church's monthly coffee mornings. What a great idea - they support several local charities and we were flattered they asked us to come along the following September. We again sold our calendars and cards - it was lovely meeting such lovely people.

August 2013 Scenes of Pinner at the Attic - Included in the exhibition were classic local scenes by photographer David Bays, vibrant altered landscapes by contemporary artist Ann Kopka, highly detailed Pen and Ink drawings by artist Clive Baxter and a candid look at Pinner Fair by photographer Kara Lines. This provided another chance to sell some photos and calendars. Many, many thanks to Kara Lines and Lines of Pinner for all their support.

May feels like a lucky month! We've be chosen not by one branch of Waitrose for it's Community Matters boxes but by two. During May we are featured in both Northwood and Harrow Weald Waitrose stores. So if you shop at Waitrose and these branches are not to far away for you - pop in - buy something (no minimum purchase required) - ask for a green token and please pop it in our box. Last time we were one of the three charities in the Harrow Weald store we received a very kind donation of £510 out of the £1,000 they shared out that month. Whatever we receive goes towards the grants we make to local organisations. Thank you for your support.

March 2013 another collection by "Phil the Bag" and money came through in April another £81 - it all helps. Fantastic support from many of our friends - throwing out old cloths - the wearable ones we try to sell through our bring and buy / coffee mornings and the odd car boot sale. When we have tried but failed to sell something we think is too good to turn into industrial rags through our friend Phil we take to a local charity shop - usually St Luke's Hospice shop.

From 9th March to 21st March 2013 we, bravely - we thought - held an exhibition of photographs "from the camera of .... " David Bays at The Attic Gallery above Lines of Pinner (friendly specialists in wallpapers, paints, made-to-measure curtains/blinds and upholstery).

In addition to the many scenes of Pinner, some of which featured in our 2013 charity calendar, there were views of other places exposed to David's camera and a selection of floral photos taken, if for no other reason than their vivid colours. See more on our page and a description on The Attic's page. See what some of the visitors to the exhibition thought - visit our exhibition review page.

2012

In 2012 we have produced a calendar for 2013 with Terry Farr of Friends Restaurant in Pinner. This consisted of photos / detachable postcards of views of Pinner plus seasonal recipes on the reverse of each month's calendar. See the section on our 2013 Pinner Calendar. This has really turned out well. The only costs are the printing costs - no selling or admin costs - then all the profits go to provide grants for local organisations to buy equipment, services and training to help local people with the additional challenges we focus on. See who kindly helped us sell our calendars. We made a profit of over £1,200 from the sale of these calendars - so thank you everyone who bought and supported us.

There's an article on the calendar on page 10 of the November issue of the new local magazine - Your Pinner News. You know they give 10% of their profits back to the community.

We, however, remain a UK wide charity. Where money is raised locally eg by way of a collection or through Waitrose Community Matters we feel it is important to feed this back into local organisations to help local people. To date just over half of our distributions have been to local organisations but we like to think we have a wider UK reach.

We distributed £6,723 in the year to March 2012 and added three more charities - Orchid (male cancer charity) and local branches of Speakability and the Stroke Association. Plus, a further addition to our work in the Targeted Youth Support area, we gave a grant for equipment to be used by the Special Needs Team at Rooks Heath College, South Harrow. (Sorry to disappoint but I have still to create our pages on these - more details later.)

Since March we have also provided a grant to St Luke's Hospice, Kenton Grange to help them to provide information sheets to carers of those who have been diagnosed with cancer.

We have been busy fundraising too.

In April we had another successful coffee morning and bring and buy sale.

In June we organised a collection for Kids Can Achieve (Harrow Weald), the Templeton Centre in Northwood Hills (local Alzheimer's Society branch) and Frustrated Communication's other locally supported organisations. A big thank you to all the collectors (many of whom were members or relatives of members of the Rotary Club of Pinner) and shoppers at Sainsbury's in Pinner for all your help and support.

In July we held a garden party to meet up with and catch up with a few friends from the past - they were generous too.

In August we hosted a cream tea afternoon and further expanded our list of supporters for the work we do.

We've had another collection and cheque from "Phil" the Bag of old clothes and leather goods for recycling.

In September we took a stall at the very popular Pinner Village Show, organised by members of the Rotary Club of Pinner. We sold cards, bric-a-brac and our newly delivered 2013 Charity Calendars. The weather was fantastic and the turnout - both stalls and visitors - was better than anyone can remember. It was great to be a part of it. Well done Rotary!

Following the success in October 2011 of our appearance in the Waitose Community Matters Scheme in their Harrow Weald Store we featured in Brent Cross in April and in South Harrow in August. Many, many thanks to Waitrose and to their customers for their support.

The July edition of the Pinner Association magazine "the Villager" carried an article on the background to Frustrated Communication and we had contact from a couple of people interested in what we are doing and offering help.

David Bays
Trustee
Frustrated Communication

through to October 2012 - Where has the year gone?


Previous postings, this year, on our What's New page:

The small, but we like to think, perfectly formed, Frustrated Team has been working on a number of things and hope to report much more in a few weeks time. So to all of you, excited to see what we've been up to, please bear with us.

David Bays
Trustee
Frustrated Communication

March 2012


Our Annual Update for 2011 has found a new home in our About Us Section. It can be accessed from these links or from the left hand panel of this page. (Sorry for any inconvenience this change may have caused.)

January 2012

It's a new year and the Frustrated Team have lots of Hopes and Plans.

We plan more Coffee Mornings, Bring and Buy Sales, Walks and Summer Garden Parties to raise funds and explain more of what we do and who we try to help.

More ways to help though this website and we hope more....

We hope that those who have supported us in the past will continue to support our efforts.

We plan to provide further help for Charities and Organisations we have helped in the past and there are a small number of additional ones we hope to help.

All to support people in the UK with Communication Difficulties like:

    Dyslexia,
    Autism,
    ADHD,
    Alzheimer's Disease and
    Stroke victims

    plus people suffering from Cancer and Diabetes.

Please contact us with any thoughts or ideas you may have.
email: david@frustrated-communication.org.uk

Our very best wishes for a Happy, Healthy and we hope Fun 2012 to all who visit our site - and those who don't.

Thank you for visiting our site ... we hope you will visit us again.

David Bays
Trustee
Frustrated Communication

January 2012