The Reader visits our circus

Today we invited a guest from a local charity, The Reader Organisation, to visit our circus and enlighten us on the fantastic work they’re doing in Liverpool and beyond…

We gathered around the grandstand to meet with Development Coordinator George Hawkins, who shared with us about how The Reader‘s groups work and why they are so valuable in combating social isolation. He also unveiled some exciting new projects they’re developing to encourage reading and storytelling amongst young children.

Well done to George from The Reader, who scored a very respectable 70 points on our Shooting Angels game!

The Reader Organisation is based in Calderstones Park in Liverpool, but works all over the country. They read with around 2,000 people per week, but their reading groups go beyond the standard book group model. Instead of reading alone at home and then meeting for a discussion, The Reader’s groups involve people reading aloud and bonding over that shared experience. Plus, their groups are run by trained facilitators who are skilled at bringing people together.

We think this is a fantastic initiative! Whether you’re a confident or nervous reader, whether your an introvert or extrovert, whether people have different educational backgrounds to you, these groups are accessible to all.

And — even though we’re a web technology company — we recognise the importance of these sorts of shared ‘non-technological experiences’ in our increasingly tech-saturated modern world.

Angel Solutions are keen to support The Reader Organisation in some way and we’ve started investigating how this can happen practically in the coming months. In the meantime, however, we’ll be donating today’s lunch money as a small thank you to them for their time today.

There’s a whole world out there!

Today’s meeting actually contributes to a much bigger picture here at Angel Solutions. As a company we already support a number of charities, both here and abroad. But we want to get more proactive with our charity involvement in 2015.

That’s why, we’ve spent this, our first Innovation Day of 2015, researching charities that we can support and planning three further charity days to take place later in the year.

Some of the charity activities we’ve investigated so far:

• Helping with Foodbank collections
• Organising a small monthly fundraising event in Liverpool Science Park
• Micro-volunteering activities
• Spending some charity days volunteering through Volunteer Centre Liverpool
• Running a BIG charity fundraising event (news to follow!)
• Building creative donation boxes
• Child or school sponsorship schemes
• Charity auctions with ‘maximum giving’ initiatives
• Donating time to read & create audiobooks
• Decorating and other practical giving to charities

Watch this space as our charity plans are unveiled in the months ahead!