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Weekly Volunteer Social Evenings. Alongside our international campaign for schools, we've got some other great projects coming along over the next few months and we think it's important to get to know as many of our volunteers as possible to ensure that we're playing to everyone's strengths. We are hoping to get some funding to assist us in setting up our own Wisdom Trust office in central London sometime before the end of the year. But in the meantime, to maintain the momentum of our growing volunteer team, we've decided to arrange a series of regular weekly social evenings at our main base in Caterham, south London, continuing next Friday, 11th September. This venue will be used until we can secure a more permanent central London venue. Although this location is right on the edge of south London, and won't suit everyone, it has good connections to the city centre, by public transport, and is very close to the M25 for those travelling by car. Furthermore, for the time being, it offers us excellent (free) facilities, including wireless internet (so people can bring their own laptops and plug into the worldwide web), kitchen facilities for a good supply of food and drink (but do feel free to bring your own food and drink to share with others if you wish), and plenty of space to meet and discuss ideas and make plans to ensure the success of each of our campaigns. Not forgetting of course, that it provides a comfortable place to meet other members of the team and get to know one another better too. Each social evening will offer a range of activities for any volunteers who can come along. These will include round table discussions, brainstorming sessions, and real work online in connection with our editorial, commercial, marketing, PR and website activities. The evenings will begin at 6:30pm and finish at 10pm, giving everyone plenty of time to get back into the city centre to catch the tube home. The Wisdom Trust address in Caterham is 5 Livingstone Road, Caterham, CR3 5TJ. There is plenty of street parking if coming by car and we're close to junctions 6 and 7 of the M25. For public transport, take the overground train from London Victoria, London Bridge, Charing Cross or Clapham Junction to Purley (about 20-30 mins journey) and then take a 466 bus (from outside the front entrance of Tesco) to Westway, Caterham (the very last stop on the route - about 15 mins journey). Apart from being great opportunities to meet members of The Wisdom Trust team and some of our other volunteers as well, these evenings will be used to work on a number of useful tasks, such as improving the range of shops on our shopping mall, project planning, enhancing our charities database to assist the work of our outreach team, developing our media group, and spending some time validating our education resource databases to help ensure our education is always based on the most accurate data possible. It should be a lot of fun, and very rewarding too, so do come along and join us. Click on the link below to confirm your attendance at one of the next two social evenings. However, to help us control numbers, please DO NOT attend an event unless you've let us know beforehand by submitting your details on this form. Thanks. If you have any questions, or problems with transport, call us on 01883 341199. We look forward to meeting you soon. Thanks once again for your support. RSVP: To sign-up for one of the next 2 volunteer social evenings, please click here Here's a map to show you where The Wisdom Trust isw based: Click here [Return To Top] |
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Wisdom Trust Weekly Open Evenings. We've suspended our regular weekly open evenings for the Summer but hope to restart them again next month with a brand new venue. Keep an eye on any information regarding these events and do try to come along and join us to see how you can make a huge difference to charities, all over the world. Wisdom Trust open evenings provide a perfect opportunity for people of all age groups, backgrounds and experience to come along and discover how, as a member of The Wisdom Trust volunteer team, they can make a huge difference both in their local community and all over the world as well. Whatever your particular skills and experience, whether in PR, Marketing, Website-Design or Finance; Commerce, Law, Education or Environment; Health, Event-Management, Proofreading or Copywriting, we need your expertise now to help ensure the success of our incredible range of campaigns all around the world. In addition, anyone who represents a particular charity or good cause will find it useful to attend one of our open evenings, where they'll discover that not only can we help promote their issues and campaigns on a global platform, via our website, but we'll also assist in creating a new income opportunity - from their existing support base - but without the need for anyone to put their hands in their pockets any more than they do already. Over 550 charities and good causes are already listed on our website, including: NSPCC, Penny Brohn Cancer Care, Cambridge Students' Rag Appeal, WWF, Christian Aid, Kent Air Ambulance Trust, Footprint Trust, Greenford High School, Muslim Aid, UNICEF, Friends of The Earth, Camden City and Islington District Scouts, St Michael's Church Croydon, Shelter, War On Want, Cats Protection League, Diabetes UK, RSPB, British Heart Foundation, Comic Relief and Younger Generation Theatre Group. 70% of all our income is set aside for donations to support the work of other organisations, be they charities, schools, churches, community projects or local sports clubs. Provided your organisation's business model is not-for-profit, we can help you boost your fundraising potential today. So, once we restart, do come along and talk to our team about how we can help your organisation better engage your support base and the key stakeholders within your organisation or the local community, by showing them how, with minimal effort, they can make a difference. But we also offer help for individuals as well, through a range of special grants. Our Eco-Grants help cover the cost of things like solar panels or wind turbines to reduce their personal carbon footprint, whilst our Education-Grants are aimed at helping students offset the costs of their higher education. And for our all our volunteers, we also offer a free carbon-offsetting program and free enrolment for an NVQ in a subject of their choice. Our open evenings are quite informal events. Doors usually open at 6pm and the evening will finish at 8pm. And as a member of our team, you'll now be able to take advantage of a free Blackberry handset, very cheap mobile calls with free email and internet access all over the UK and in 64 other countries - and raise money for The Wisdom Trust every time you make a phonecall or send a text message. This is one of the fantastic components of our great new The Power of Good campaign and We'll have details of this and of many other benefits for our members at the meeting. [Return To Top] |
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Wisdom Trust Volunteers Qualify For Free NVQ. Another great benefit for The Wisdom Trust through our partnership with BOLTA and The Arabic Centre For Career Development is that we can also take advantage of their own range of training courses for our volunteers. Quite simply, any of our volunteers - registered friends of The Wisdom Trust - who achieve a given level of activity as a volunteer, will become eligible for a free online NVQ course, in a subject of their choosing. As you can imagine, this is an incredible opportunity for all our volunteers. By volunteering for The Wisdom Trust (even those who do most of their volunteering online from home on their own computer) and thereby helping to make a difference to the big global issues of poverty, environment and health, any of our volunteers can qualify for a course which will be both interesting and beneficial to the individual who takes it, because it will be another positive item to add to their CV. Courses will almost always be e-learning, meaning that they can be done at home, in your own time. For more information about this, please contact us by telephone or email. [Return To Top] |
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Volunteering Abroad in 2010. By working with some of our partners overseas, we're planning to set up a wide range of volunteering opportunties for members of The Wisdom Trust teams. Anyone can qualify for these opportunities and we'll be giving more details of these towards the end of the year, but there will be some in Africa, others in Asia and still more in Europe and South America, as well as right here in the UK. But to qualify, you will have to be regularly active on the website, i.e. with at least 200 FC's per month, and you'll need to help us spread the word, by building a large fundraising network (i.e. by introducing friends and family to begin with, and any other people you know who shop online, for example) in order to facilitate your own personal grant fund which can then be used to cover the expenses of your trip. So if you're keen to be involved next Summer, just make sure that from now on, you remain active every month (at least 200 FC's) and start spreading the word (using the 'Invite A Friend' option in the Members menu). And watch the website for more information later in the year. [Return To Top] |
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Latest Charities To Join The Wisdom Trust. Several new charities and good causes have joined The Wisdom Trust's list of supported organisations over recent weeks and months. These include Greenworks, London Action Trust - Allotment Learning Project and GS Salwan Public School. You can find all these organisations listed on The Wisdom Trust website and you'll be able to link from there to their websites for more information about their aims, recent successes and current campaigns. If you know of a charity or good cause which is not yet on our list, why not nominate them to be added so that we can help promote their issues and support their work as well. [Return To Top] |
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New User? Here's Some Notes For Getting Started. Once you're registered as a friend of The Wisdom Trust, these notes will help you get started, including. - 1. How to earn credits (Fundraising Credits, or FC's & Gift Credits) to divert money to your chosen charities and build your own personal wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund. - 2. How to vote to make sure your favourite charities get as large a share as possible of our main donations fund. - 3. How to contribute to our fund without any effort, and, more importantly, without the need for you to put your hands in your pocket. - 4. How to introduce your friends, family and colleagues to join us too. - 5. How to invite other charites and good causes to sign-up as one of our listed organisations and receive donations from our fund. There are also a series of powerpoint presentations on the website to help you find out more about how The Wisdom Trust works and how you can become an important part of our team, helping us make a difference all around the world, as well as supporting your own favourite good cause at the same time. a) AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WISDOM TRUST http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/THEWISDOMTRUSTINTRO/fullscreen.htm b) HOW WE FUND CHARITIES & GOOD CAUSES http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/FUNDINGGOODCAUSES/fullscreen.htm c) WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/WHATCANYOUDO/fullscreen.htm d) FORMING A NETWORK OF FAMILY & FRIENDS http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/FORMINGANETWORK/fullscreen.htm e) GET INVOLVED - SEE HOW YOU CAN GET STARTED http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/GETINVOLVED/fullscreen.htm What do you need to do? - 1. Try to log in every day, or three times a week, and use the education programs (particularly Wisdom Aware and Wisdom IQ - accessed from the Education menu) to earn credits (Fundraising Credits or FC's). Aim to get an average of 10 or 11 per day (you get one FC for every question you get right). Get into the habit of this so it almost becomes second nature. You can check the current value of your own personal Wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund online 24/7 using the stats link on the Members menu. And you can see your position in The Wisdom Trust hall of fame using the Hall of Fame link on the Members menu. Remember, your personal Wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund grows in value for every Fundraising Credit you get. You can use the value of your fund to a) make donations to any of the charities and good causes on our list; b) apply for a Wisdom Eco Grant to help fund things like solar panels in order to reduce your carbon footprint at home or at the office;c) apply for a Wisdom Education Grant (if you're a student or former student) to offset the cost of your education; d) use our carbon calculator and offset some of your personal carbon footprint. Every now and then, you'll get the opportunity to earn Gift Credits instead of Fundraising Credits. These build up on your account and you can donate them at any time, to any of the charities and good causes on our list. To donate your Gift Credits, go into Wisdom IQ (from the Education menu) and click on the donate button at the bottom of the screen. A voucher will appear and you select how many Gift Credits you want to donate and the charity you wish to donate to. **** IMPORTANT **** Start-Up Bonus Awards: Within your first 2 weeks, if you get 60 FC's and introduce 2 new members who each get a minimum of 15 FC's, you'll be awarded 10,000 extra FC's as a special start-up bonus. Then encourage the two new people you brought on board to do the same. And when they get their award we'll add a further 2,500 FC's to your total. - 2. Help us choose the charities and good causes we support by using the Vote link on the Members menu. You can vote for one organisation on each of the two drop-down lists. And if you should reach 10 FC's in a day, you'll get another vote. - 3. Every day, you can help put some money into our fund without putting your hands in your pocket.... a) You can run a few of your normal online searches on each visit, using our partner search engines (Search on the Resources menu). b) Or you can run a few price comparisons for things you might want to buy on each visit, using our partner price comparison engines (Pricecheck on the Resources menu). c) You can also simply visit the websites of some of our featured advertisers (Surf on the Resources menu). Every search, every price comparison and every visit to an advertiser's website earns money for our fund. Aim for 2 or 3 of each of the above 3 activities on each visit. And if you shop online, you can shop through The Wisdom Trust shopping mall (Shopping Mall on the Resources menu) and everything you buy will earn money for our fund, at no extra cost or inconvenience to you. - 4. Once you're in the habit of doing the above three things every day, reach out to some of your friends and family - especially those who already have a passion for helping charitable causes - because we can help them raise money for their favourite good cause. You'll find two standard emails using the Invite New Members link on the Members menu, one for individuals and one for charities. Use the appropriate links to send these to yourself, then forward them from your email address to any of your friends, family or colleagues who use the internet, especially those who already shop online, and even more so to those people you know who are passionate about raising money for one good cause or another. Once people start to sign-up and become part of your own Wisdom Trust network, you can check the state of your personal Wisdom Trust family tree using the Genealogy link on the Members menu. - 5. Use the standard email for organisations, detailed in point 4, to invite any organisations you know who need to raise money. Talk to them first, find out the right contact name and email address then send them the email from your personal email address. They can register themselves on the website and then invite all their supporters to join too in order to vote for them. **** IMPORTANT **** Start-Up Bonus Awards: Within your first 2 weeks, if you get 60 FC's and introduce 2 new members who each get a minimum of 15 FC's, you'll be awarded 10,000 extra FC's as a special start-up bonus. Then encourage the two new people you brought on board to do the same. And when they get their award we'll add a further 2,500 FC's to your total. **** SPECIAL INCENTIVE FOR SCHOOLS **** Every month, the student at each school who through their various introductions to family, friends and neighbours etc., produces the most online shoppers during the month, will receive a special prize. One prize will be allocated per month to each participating school and all winning students will receive a certificate in addition to their prize. So to summarise... on each visit, you a) learn something new; b) earn 10 or 11 FC's; c) vote for your favourite charities; d) run 2 or 3 searches; e) run 2 or 3 price comparisons; and f) visit the websites of 2 or 3 of our advertising partners. Six things to do on each visit - probably about 10 minutes effort each time. And invite three or four of your friends to do the same. Remember, our motto is: "Do A Little - Help A Lot!" [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust - Find Us On Bebo. The Wisdom Trust now has its own profile on the social networking website, Bebo. If you're a user of Bebo, make sure you add us as one of your friends and stay more in touch with all that's new with The Wisdom Trust. Our ID on Bebo is Wisdom-Trust If you're not already a Bebo user, why not sign-up free of charge at www.bebo.com And don't forget, we've also got profiles on the other two main social networking websites, Myspace and Facebook [Return To Top] |
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Free Carbon Offsetting - Now Available. The Wisdom Trust has now launched a series of carbon calculators on our website, in co-operation with The Carbon Neutral Company. Now all our members will be able to find out how many kilograms of carbon they're responsible for (from all sources - gas or elecricity at home, vehicles, transport and travel). Having done that, you'll be able to look at a range of ways to offset those emissions - without any cost or inconvenience to you, as you'd expect of any project within The Wisdom Trust program. Quite simply, you create your own personal Wisdom 'charity fund' by earning Fundraising Credits (FC's) through the online education programs, or by shopping online through The Wisdom Trust shopping mall, and even by introducing new members to The Wisdom Trust among your own friends and family. Then you can use the value of this personal fund, either to make donations to one of our listed charities and good causes, or to set aside some of it to offset some (or all) your carbon emissions. Why not find out how much carbon you're creating? Click here to open the page with our three carbon calculators. [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust on Myspace - Join Our Group. The Wisdom Trust now has its own position within the Myspace online social network, and you can check out our entry at:- www.myspace.com/wisdomtrust. Take a look at our page and add us as one of your 'friends'. Leave an online message, if you wish, or contact us by email in the normal way and tell us what you think. We hope to keep the blog section up-to-date with information about new charities, donations, members' activities and anything else to do with The Wisdom Trust. You'll also be able to join our special interest group on Myspace, as well. You can find details of our Myspace group by clicking here. [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust On Facebook - Check Us Out. The Wisdom Trust has a profile on the Facebook social networking website and it has also launched its own group on Facebook too. If you're an existing Facebook user then click here to join the group and stay in touch with our regular bulletins. You'll also be able to network with other members of the group, make new friends and find out what other people think about the big global issues - poverty, environment and health. If you're not yet a Facebook user, why not sign up and get involved. We've also added The Wisdom Trust to Facebook's directory of 'causes' and you can join that too by clicking here. These two facilities simply offer further ways for everyone to stay in touch with all that's going on at The Wisdom Trust. If you've not yet signed up on our main Facebook profile, you can click here to do so. And if you are a Facebook member, make sure you tell all your friends there about The Wisdom Trust. [Return To Top] |
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Charity Stories & Articles Needed For Wisdom Trust Newsletter. Our new weekly newsletter is now up and running and we'd now like to invite any of our listed charities and good causes to submit short stories or articles which promote their work and current issues or campaigns. These should be under any of the three main headings - Poverty, Environment and Health. We'll select one story from each of the three headings to feature in each week's issue of the newsletter, with a link to the charity's Website for those who wish to get further information. Send your articles by email to newsletter@wisdomtrust.org and remember to include the name of the organisation submitting the article together with a website address (or a particular website page) to where people can be redirected for more information. [Return To Top] |
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Shopping Stories. Marian wanted to buy a cosmetics gift set for her daughter's 16th birthday and being a friend of The Wisdom Trust, she looked on The Wisdom Trust shopping mall for any shops that sold things like that. After a while, she found a great gift idea on the Superdrug website and placed her order. As a result of her purchase, The Wisdom Trust earned £1.56, automatically and at at no extra cost or inconvenience to him. That's enough to feed about fifteen hungry children in Africa, or even enough to provide about three bamboo tree in China to give years of nourishment to endangered panda bears. It would also be enough to replant about one square metre of rainforest, or provide one bag of potato seed to feed a few families in the developing world for many months - and all thanks to Marian's gift for her daughter's birthday. Isn't that brilliant? Remember to use The Wisdom Trust for all your online shopping. And if the shop you want isn't listed, let us know and we'll try to get them on board in the near future. And don't forget to use our price comparison engines to check out the best prices of anything you want to buy. [Return To Top] |
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A Whole Range Of New Volunteering Opportunities. The Wisdom Trust is really a unique charity - one of a kind. We're already reaching out all over the world, supporting the work of over 550 charities and good causes in more than 25 countries - and we're still only three years old. Although our fundraising support for other charitable causes is important and provides a vital new funding opportunity for large and small charities alike, our main goal is to educate people about poverty, environment and health - and to help them to apply that new knowledge by showing them hundreds (even thousands) of simple practical tips everyone can bring into their own lives to a) reduce their personal carbon footprint and b) improve their own health. And now, as part of our global campaigns, we're looking to expand the reach of our education programmes. We're just about to start working on a campaign in association with the International Confederation of Principals (ICP) to reach out to 300,000 schools all over the world (including all 37,000 schools right here in the UK). We want to help students and young people (and their parents, families and friends) learn more about the big global issues affecting the future of our planet - mainly poverty, environment and health. We'll be offering them learning tools on our website together with lots of great tests and quizzes so they can see how much they've learned so far and assess their performance compared to everyone else in their class, or in their school or all over the world. And there'll be certificates and recognition for all students who get involved and aspire to one of the best in their class. On top of that, all the students in a class can work together to make their class the best in the school and the whole school can work together to make their school the best in the country. But not only that, we'll be raising money from their use of our website with over 1,000 carefully-selected commercial partners and donating that fund to support the work of participating schools and of many other charites and not-for-profit good causes in their communities. And right now, we're looking to meet with everyone who'd like to consider joining our team of volunteers to help us with this and all our other campaigns. Whatever your skills and experience, we'd like to chat with you so we can assess better where you could help us. We're going to need a lot of people in order to ensure the success of this new campaign for schools in particular - and if we are successful, we'll be supporting not just 550 charities as we are now, but potentially several million charities and good causes all over the world. This will ensure that over the next five years, The Wisdom Trust, together with all our new partner schools, will be making a serious contribution to reduce climate change, relieve poverty and improve world health - and it will be a campaign driven forward by the young people on every continent. So what can you do to help us make a difference all over the world? We're looking for people to help us in all areas of our operation, and in particular for people who can become part of our management team for their own area of expertise to help co-ordinate all our other volunteers in that field. For example, we're looking for volunteers with particular skills (and possibly experience too) in:- PR Our PR team will work together to design and implement a strong PR/media strategy, to ensure that our public profile is always positive and to help prepare perfect press releases every time. With regard to our upcoming schools campaign, we'll be looking for our PR team to run campaigns in the local press here in the UK, in those areas where we're working with schools, so that we can reach out into the local region to engage other groups in the community. We'll also look to our PR team to keep our campaigns in the national media (TV, radio and newspapers) whenever possible - and each country where we start activities - so that public awareness about The Wisdom Trust and about The Wisdom Trust 'brand' is always high. If you have experience in the PR or media industry do get in touch with us as soon as possible to see how your skills can help us succeed in our schools campaign. Website Programmers/Designers The present website was put together originally by two of our trustees, who knew nothing about website design when they started. But we acknowledge now that with some big campaigns on the horizon - especially our worlwide campaign to schools, we now need something a bit more special. So we're currently in the middle of a complete rewrite of our existing website to provide us with a fantastic online adventure to excite and educate all our website visitors whatever their age or background. IN particular, we want to make sure that our new website has a definite 'cool' factor to keep young people interested enough so they choose to return to the website for more of the same, again and again. It's a big job we've set for ourselves, but with a potential worldwide audience of over 100 million people (including students, their parents, families and friends), we could be looking at something which could end up being even bigger than some of the big social networking site (for example). So we need a large team of experienced programmers who can help us ensure that every page on the new website is constructed with perfect 'industry-standard' coding so that it operates as fast and as efficiently as possible. And of course, we're also going to need some experienced designers who can make sure every section of our website is both exciting and appealing, and easy-to-use too. Finally, all our website programmers and designers would need to be just that little bit extra special, working together to take all the wonderful ideas coming out of our Education, PR and Marketing teams and turn those ideas into a fantastic online experience for our users. Law We're looking for people with all sorts of relevant legal experience to help us ensure that all our activities are compliant at all times (in every country where we're active), and to check through any contracts and assess any legal risks. IF you have any legal experience do get in touch today and join The Wisdom Trust volunteer legal team. Strategy/Planning With so many incredible projects all coming along at once, we're going to need some volunteers with experience of strategy planning to help us with forward planning and with co-ordinating all the various strategies from all areas of the operation, i.e. to make sure we move forward with 'joined-up thinking'. For example, with regard to our upcoming campaign to schools around the world, we'll need to make sure we have the right strategy planning in place to ensure the whole operation runs as smoothly as possible. So if you have eperience of strategy planning, do contact us today to see how you can help us. Editorial/Copywriting We think our editorial team will become one of the most important parts of our whole operation, being responsible for composing all our newsletters, articles and factsheets as well as ensuring that every word, phrase and paragraph on our website (and in hard copy) is relevant, accurate, easily-understood and as concise as possible. So if you have any experience in editorial matters, copywriting or proofreading, we'd like to hear from you today. Although most of the work of the editorial team can be done online, from home at times to suit each person, there will be weekly opportunities to meet up and discuss our editorial strategy round the table. These meetings will take place at our main office in Caterham, south London, on different evenings of the week and light refreshments will be provided. Events Management We're hoping to put together a team of brilliant events management specialists to help us deliver an exciting and innovative range of events of all types, all year round, including roadshows, festivals, seminars, training courses, fundraising events and new campaign launches. We also need a team of people to help us meet & greet the people who'll be attending our weekly open evenings at the London office and to prepare an interesting evening of varied content each week. If you have experience in event management or as part of an events team, contact us today to see how you can be part of this exciting team. With regard to our new campaign aimed at schools, we're particularly interested at the moment in putting together a roadshow event to tour round schools here in the UK. Our plan is to develop an events program where we're organising at least one event every week, in addition to our weekly open evenings in central London. These will be a mix of music events, sports-related events, quiz nights, karaoke, fundraisers, outdoor events, networking and social evenings, education events and sometimes dance nights too. But we'll consider all ideas - so get your thinking cap on. We want our events program to allow us to engage with all kinds of people (in all age groups) and to show them that The Wisdom Trust isn't just about serious issues, it's about having fun too. Finance We're looking for some people with experience in all areas of financial matters to join our new Finance team to help us look outside our normal funding avenues to other funding opportunities. We'd also like this team to assess any possible financial risks and later on to advise on any investment opportunities for our fund. If you have any relevant financial experience, do contact us as soon as possible to get involved in our finance team. Healthcare/Medical Issues Our Healthcare team will be targetted to ensure that the healthcare information and health-tips on our website are as comprehensive as possible, as well as being accurate, relevant, up-to-date and interesting. Potentially our worldwide audience could exceed 100 million young people and their families so the information we're sharing with them could make a valuable contribution, not only in creating more awareness about the state of health and healthcare around the world, but in helping to improve the health of all our members as well. If you have experience in any area of the healthcare industry do get in contact with us today and join our Healthcare team. Environmental Issues Our Environment team will be targetted to ensure that the environment information and eco-tips on our website are as comprehensive as possible, as well as being accurate, relevant, up-to-date and interesting. Potentially our worldwide audience could exceed 100 million young people and their families so the information we're sharing with them could make a valuable contribution, not only in creating more awareness about the dangers of climate change and environmental destruction, but in helping to change people's behaviour to reduce their personal carbon footprints and help protect their local environment. If you have experience in any area of the environment or wildlife sectors do get in contact with us today and join our Environment team. Education We hope that our Education team will comprise of people with a strong background in education (teachers, for example, or even retired teachers or headteachers). The task of this team will be to help us ensure that our education (both online and offline) is delivered in as interesting, enjoyable and informative a way as possible, so people of all age groups learn something new on each visit to the website and choose to come back for more, as often as possible. We want our Education team to use all their collective experience to imagine, discuss and design innovative and exciting new education programmes to add something new to our existing library of programmes, helping all our users more to learn about the big global issues and about what they can do to help make a difference. The Education team will work closely with both the Environment team and the Healthcare team to ensure the information they provide is delivered to our users via the range of proposed new education programmes, and they'll work with the Website team to make sure the programme ideas are turned into amazing online tools for learning. If you have experience in any area of education we urge you to contact us today and join our Education team. Marketing The task of our Marketing team will be to help us put together fantastic marketing campaigns, preferably at zero (or little) cost, both online and through our media contacts, in co-operation with the PR team. We're particularly interested in using social networking websites as marketing tools, and we'd like to experiment with viral marketing as a tool to reach out to as many people as possible, with minimal effort. Our Marketing team will work closely with both our PR team and our Events Management team to deliver the best possible marketing campaigns - with fantastic results every time. If you have experience in any area of the marketing industry or even if you consider yourself a brilliant networker, do get in touch with us as soon as possible to join our Marketing team. Fundraising/Networking We're looking to put together a Fundraising team which will closely study all methods of fundraising, with the exception of ever asking our members for donations - we just don't do that. Much of our fundraising is done through the website via our various affiliate marketing agreements and we'd encourage our Fundraising team to work closely with our Marketing team to implement a disciplined viral marketing campaign to increase our income substantially over a relatively short period of time. But we'd also like our Fundraising team to look at other opportunities - fundraising events (for example), working in co-operation with our Events Management team, and even reaching out into the corporate world to seek donations from there. Finally, we hope our Fundraising team will be able to assess and apply for any funding available from other trusts and foundations. If you have experience in any area of fundraising do get in contact with us and join our Fundraising team as soon as possible. Commercial One of the main areas from which The Wisdom Trust generates funds is from our extensive range of commercial partners. These include online shops, search engines, auction houses, price comparison websites and general advertisers, all of whom pay us a fee for advertising on our website, or for each completed search or price comparison and (in the case of online shops) when someone makes a purchase from their website after linking to it from ours. We need a team of well-organised people to form a Commercial team, whose responsibilities will include the management of all these partners to ensure that we're promoting them adequately on our website and that any adverts of banners are relevant, Current, seasonal (where appropriate) and up-to-date. We have over 1,000 shops and search engine partners alone and this could expand to many times that number. But if managed correctly, the potential income from all these partnerships could be substantial. If you are a well-motivated, organised person, who enmjoys a challenge, why not contact us to become part of our Commercial team and help us put together one of the most exciting shopping experiences on the internet, generating huge sums for charity every month, You'll be able to work almost entirely from home, one your own computer, so your working hours can be very flexible indeed. In all these areas, we hope to be able to invite exceptional people to join our board of trustees as the representative of their chosen area of expertise. So, if you feel you'd like to get involved as a member of one of our specialist volunteer groups, simply click here to tell us where you feel you could contribute most to help us achieve success with our schools project in 2009 (and beyond) and to make a real difference in the world. [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust In Teacher's Post. The Wisdom Trust has featured twice in recent issues of Teacher's Post, a Royal Mail Group publication, which is distributed three times each year to 37,000 schools across The United Kingdom. We also hope to feature in the next issue, due for publication in early June. YOu can find the two articles about The Wisdom Trust by viewing the online version of Teacher's Post at:- June 2007 Sept 2007 The Royal Mail Group Education department was recognised in 2007 as delivering a long term positive impact on communities at the annual BITC Awards for Excellence. With this in mind, The Wisdom Trust could not find a better partner in our campaign to engage with schools and their students to get as many of them as possible involved in our various education programs, as well as fundraising for the schools themselves. [Return To Top] |
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Latest Donations To Charities From The Wisdom Trust. Several donations have been made recently to some of The Wisdom Trust's listed charities and good causes. These include £35.17 to Macmillan Cancer Relief, £10.00 to Messengers of HOPE, £37.72 to Special Kids in The UK, £13.62 to 15th St Pancras Scouts and £95.30 to Younger Generation Theatre Group. These donations bring the total fund distributed to charities over the last two years to £5,490.98. A total of 49 different charities and good causes have so far been in receipt of donations from The Wisdom Trust. [Return To Top] |
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Sainsburys Donate £700 to The Wisdom Trust. For the third year running, leading UK supermarket chain Sainsburys have kindly donated £700 to The Wisdom Trust, through their popular Local Heroes scheme. Sainsburys recognises that many members of staff contribiute their time to support local charitable organisations outside of work and to celebrate and support these activities, the Local Heroes scheme makes dontions towards staff members' chosen good causes. The scheme is proving extremely popular and over £800,000 has so far been donated to charities and other good causes. This is second time, The Wisdom Trust has been in receipt of a donation through the Local Heroes scheme. [Return To Top] |
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Royal Bank of Scotland Gives £250 to The Wisdom Trust. Leading UK bank The Royal Bank of Scotland have kindly donated £250 to The Wisdom Trust, through their Community Cashback Awards scheme. Royal Bank of Scotland recognises that many members of staff contribiute their time to support local charitable organisations outside of work and the bank is delighted to help those community groups, schools a rities where their staff are already making an important contribution in their own time. The scheme is proving extremely popular and a substantial sum has so far been donated to charities and other good causes. This is second time, The Wisdom Trust has been in receipt of a donation through the RBS Community Cashback Awards scheme. [Return To Top] |
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The Power Of Good. We've just launched a new and very exciting campaign which we've called "The Power Of Good". We've teamed up with The Urility Warehouse, a company which many of you won't have heard of before, but they're really a quite amazing utility supply company (supplying gas, electricity, telephone, mobile, broadband) with a 'triple value' guarantee on their prices, so customers can have peace of mind (continuously) that the company will always offer the best rates or (at the very least) 100% competitive with the best rates available, so people can save money every day - absolutely! But even from this low-price base, The Utility Warehouse offers a range of discount schemes so customers can reduce their bill even further. So who is The Utility Warehouse? Well, they're currently the Financial Times 'Company Of The Year', and a major UK plc - being in the FT top 250 companies. Plus, on top of that, they regularly receive great reviews in Which magazine and 'best-buy' awards too, for many of their services. Quite simply, people can register to save money, which is a great idea on its own, anyway - and don't forget, that's guaranteed - plus, as we said earlier, there are all sorts of other clever ways they can discount their bill even further - in theory almost down to zero - that's right, people could get a FREE bill!. Yes, we know that sounds just too good to be true, but it's remarkably easy to take advantage of all the discount schemes, as you'll find out, if you become a customer. But the really fantastic news is that The Wisdom Trust will earn a small commission every time our members (and others who sign up within our programme) get a bill. So people can raise money for charity (helping to feed hungry children, protect the rainforest, provide better healthcare, education, shelter and cleaner water all over the world, etc.), every time they turn on a light, watch TV, cook a meal, take a bath, use the telephone, mobile or internet - while they're saving money. That's the Power of Good. It could be an incredible campaign. And because things like fridges, freezers, hot water and heating run 24 hours a day, we can now claim that "Fundraising with The Wisdom Trust is so easy, you can do it in your sleep!" Click here to access The Wisdom Trust's special Utility Warehouse page for more information. There you'll be able to view the rather amusing video clips specially put together by French & Saunders, look over all the products, services and prices and even sign-up online. Once you're a customer, you'll really be raising money for charity every time you use your new cheap Utilty Warehouse services. And then you can look to take advantage of the range of discount programmes to make your cheap bill even cheaper. Career Opportunities Too - Raising Money For Charity By Saving People Money. Another interesting aspect of our agreement with The Utility Warehouse is that we can also set up freelance agents/distributors who could market this campaign on our behalf, raising money for The Wisdom Trust with each customer who registers, but also earning a small commission for themselves as well (paid by The Utility Warehouse, not by us). So, as an official indpendent agent/distributor for them, you would be entitled to build your own income too, if that was of interest to you. You'd still be a member of our volunteer team for everything else we do, but alongside that, you'd have set up your own freelance activities within this new and exciting utilities/telecoms supply project, working either full-time or part-time. Not a bad idea for someone who's currently between jobs, or even for that matter, for any of us finding it hard to make ends meet in these difficult economic time. Call us on 01883 341199 if this sounds interesting to you. A Free Blackberry Handset For Every Wisdom Trust Volunteer Finally, on this particular subject, anyone connected with The Wisdom Trust volunteer team qualifies for a free Blackberrry handset, with the best call plan on the market (of course, supplied by The Utility Warehouse), free email access and internet usage in the UK and in over 60 other countries worldwide, and always in the knowledge that every time you use the phone you'll be raising money for charity (and not just one charity, but over 550 charities through The Wisdom Trust). We think that's an amazing opportunity for everyone. What do you think? Phone us on 01883 341199 for more details about this. Or you can visit our own special Utility Warehouse website at:- WT Projects Thanks! [Return To Top] |
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Worldwide Partnerships For Education. The Wisdom Trust is committed to supporting the work of charities & good causes worldwide. With that in mind, we intend to reach out to local communities by extending our education programmes to schools all over the world. Working, over the next few years, with The International Confederation of Principals (ICP), an international headteachers association, as well as directly with various governments around the world, we hope to engage with over 250,000 schools in more than 40 countries. We want to connect with their staff, students and families, educating them online about big global issues (poverty, environment & health), and helping them to learn how to be more socially responsible. We also want to encourage them to participate with the global charity community by helping us support other charities and good causes not only in their own local communities, but all over the world as well. In addition, a major part of this programme is to establish links between small groups of schools from different continents via special online forums and through other internet-based technologies. In this way, we can give birth to a wonderfully exciting global online conversation between staff & students (and their families) on every continent, primarily about the big global issues, but about other subjects of mutual interest as well (e.g. sport, culture, music, art & hobbies). And on top of our main aims and objectives, there is a clear opportunity to help to create more friendship, goodwill and understanding. Through our Worldwide Partnerships For Education, we want to help people, of all ages, to learn and become more aware about the big global issues which will affect the future of our planet - especially poverty, environment & health, as well as discovering what everyone can do in their own lives to help make a difference. [Return To Top] |
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The League Of Wisdom. Students who participate in our Worldwide Partnerships For Education programme will be awarded credits as they learn through the website and can aspire to be the best in their class or school, each day, week or month. In addition, we'll shortly launch our League of Wisdom where all our participating schools can compete together to be the champion school each month, based on how much their students are learning through The Wisdom Trust website, compared to students at other schools. The champion school each month will receive a trophy and possibly also a visit from a celebrity or VIP to present the trophy and inspire the students with a short talk. This idea has never been tried before. Schools from all over the world will be able to compete together, but not on a football field or on a rugby field, but rather on a field of learning - not about things such as history, geography, maths and science, but about big global issues like poverty, environment and health, and learning together about simple things everyone can do to help make a difference in their own community and all over the world. [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust Social Networking Site. We've set up our own social networking site, just for The Wisdom Trust members, and we'll be inviting all our active volunteers to join that. Do sign up on that, get involved in one of the focus groups on there, then join in the online discussions. Over 120 of our volunteers have already done and we'd love you to join us. But you need to be sent an invitation to join so contact us by return email, if you're interested, and we'll send you an invite as soon as possible. [Return To Top] |
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Raise Funds For Your Favourite Cause. If you represent any particular charity or good cause, anywhere in the world, or even if you support one, The Wisdom Trust can help promote your issues on a global platform and make donations to support your work. Simply register on our website, submit the details of your organisation, then promote us to your staff & supporters. They can register with us and vote for you every day (if they wish). Plus they can add more value to the donations we make to you, a) by earning credits via our education programmes, and b) by diverting some of their normal online searching & shopping through our website. Click here to create a free login profile for your cause. And there is a link in point 2 at the top of the online registration form for you to send us the details of your organisation. [Return To Top] |
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Get Your Company Involved. The Wisdom Trust works with charities, good causes and other not-for-profit organisations all over the world, but we're also happy to explore partnerships with companies or other corporate bodies to promote our issues and assist in that organisation's Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. If the company has its own charitable foundation, or if it has an annual charity fund, from which it donates to local, national or international charitable causes, we would be happy to list that as one of our good causes. Alternatively, if the company wishes, we can create a special Wisdom Trust 'charity fund' in the company's name (e.g. XYZ Services Ltd. Charitable Fund) and list that on our website instead. The company can promote The Wisdom Trust to its management & staff, (maybe even to its suppliers & customers as well). They can engage with us individually, register as friends of The Wisdom Trust, then learn more about the big global issues (poverty, environment & health) and about 1000s of simple things they can do to help make a difference. By reaching out in this way to help spread awareness and create a greater understanding about these important issues, the company's charity foundation, (or its charity fund) stands to benefit financially every time any of the people who engage with us, earns credits through our education programs, searches the internet, shops online or introduces their own friends & family. Click here to create a free login profile for your company. And there is a link in point 2 at the top of the online registration form for you to send us the details of your organisation's charity, community or CSR activities. [Return To Top] |
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S.U.R.F. With Wisdom. By signing-up as a friend of The Wisdom Trust, you can help us support charities & good causes all over the world. It's very easy - in fact, we've created a four-step journey to wisdom, called S.U.R.F., to help you remember what you can do to help make a difference. S: Support charities & good causes when you're online - Simply divert your normal online searching & shopping via our website. U: Understand the issues - Learn more about poverty, environment and health through our education programmes. R: Register your support - As a friend of The Wisdom Trust, you can vote for your favourite charities and even nominate others to be listed. F: Form a network of friends & family - To us networks aren't just about wires & cables. We want to create a true sense of connectivity & community. We achieve more when we work together so creating better friendship, goodwill & understanding across all borders is right at the core of our mission. So introduce us to everyone you know. If you're not already registered as a friend of The Wisdom Trust, simply Click here to sign up today. [Return To Top] |
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We're Planning A Brilliant New Fundraising Event. As you probably know, The Wisdom Trust always strives to be innovative in everything it does. With that in mind, we've just come up with an idea to plan and stage one of the biggest and most imaginative fundraising events in recent memory. Our fundraising strategy team has come up with a truly brilliant idea - something unique that's never been done before and we hope to stage this in October 2009, or April 2010. It would be our goal to raise up to £100 million from the whole event (which may run over several days) and really boosting the value of the donations we give to charity. If it's successful, we could repeat the event every year, or even more than once a year, but let's see how the first one goes before making too many plans about the future. We don't want to give away too many details here because many of them have yet to be worked out, but suffice to say, it will be an incredible event, it will be open to all age groups, it will promote healthy activity over a whole day (or over several days) and, perhaps most importantly, it will have the two main Wisdom Trust objectives at its core - i.e. to help create more awareness about big global issues and to support the global charity community. Right now, as we start to plan this event, we're looking for about a dozen or so really keen people, who might be interested in coming onto our special focus team to examine the feasibility of this idea in more depth. So if you'd like to be involved, contact Graham on 01883 341199 to arrange a meeting so we can discuss your possible role in the campaign. And do try to come along to our new brainstorming sessions, the first of which is on Thursday, meeting at 5:30pm in The Great Court at The British Museum (see article elsewhere in this bulletin for more information). And because we expect this to become a major operation in its own right, we're even considering the option to set up a separate commercial arm of The Wisdom Trust (almost a separate organisation, but still 100% under our control) to plan and run the event on behalf of The Wisdom Trust. This organisation, of course, in view of the very commercial nature of many of its proposed activities, will need to employ staff rather that rely solely on volunteers. So, once again, we would be very interested in talking to anyone who might like to consider a new and challenging full-time career, working to enhance the fundraising activities of The Wisdom Trusts (and indirectly of all our partner charities too, of course). It could be a very rewarding change of direction for everyone involved. And since these positions (if we do go down this route) won't actually be available for some months yet (in fact, some of them not until 2010), everyone has a wonderful opportunity in the meantime to demonstrate their skills and experience to us as a Wisdom Trust volunteer, so we can better judge which people would be more suited to particular roles in the new organisation. In addition, every member of staff working for the new commercial arm (and we might end up needing dozens of people for it), whatever their job or title, will be given at least one or two days off every 2 weeks to volunteer for The Wisdom Trust, so they'd still be part of our wonderful volunteer team as well. Don't forget, contact Graham on 01883 341199 and/or turn up to one of the brainstorming sessions, if you'd be interested in getting involved with this idea. Thanks. [Return To Top] |
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Win West End Theatre Tickets By Using The Wisdom Trust, Every Week. The Wisdom Trust has launched a new incentive for all our members who regularly use the website to learn and to shop online. Every week, one lucky member will be awarded 2 tickets for a top West End show - and next week that member could be you! And to add to the excitement, we won't be announcing the show for which the tickets apply until the award has been allocated each week, to the winning member. But suffice to say the tickets from The Wisdom Trust will be for one of the top shows in London - and that's guaranteed. How can you get your hands on these fantastic tickets? Well, it's really quite simple really. All you have to do is to achieve a certain level of activity on the website each week, and as long as you qualify by midnight on any Sunday evening, you'll be in with a chance to win the two tickets that week. And the tickets will be valid for one day in the week after that, i.e. the week commencing on the second Monday, eight days after the Sunday on which you qualified. All qualifying members will be entered into a draw on the Monday after the midnight cut-off point on the Sunday and one lucky winner will be selected at random. And what's the qualification criteria? Well, it couldn't be more easy. Just accumulate 50 credits (FC's) during the week, Monday to Sunday, by using our education programmes to learn more about the big issues affecting the future of our planet - AND - put one valid purchase through our shopping mall. If you won't be shopping online yourself in any one week, don't worry, you can still qualify that week if someone else, but someone introduced by you, shops online and puts their purchase through the website that week instead. As long as you or someone introduced by you shops online through our website in any one week and as long as in that same week, you yourself accumulate 50 credits (FC's) you'll be entered into the draw for the tickets. Good luck! And if you're lucky enough to be a winner, we'll be in touch early in the week after your success to arrange delivery of your tickets. Thanks for your support. [Return To Top] |
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Wisdom Trust On Stage In Singapore. As many of you know, last month, The Wisdom Trust was a guest in Singapore for the 9th world congress of the International Confederation of Principals (ICP), where we had the chance to engage with many of the 2000 headteachers present from 40 countries and to tell them all about The Wisdom Trust. We had very constructive discussions with people from many different cultures and traditions (including S.Africa, Australia, India, USA, New Zealand, Uganda, Singapore, UK, Canada, Zambia, Indonesia & Ireland). And the conclusion is that we really do have an excellent programme that is more than attractive for schools everywhere. Everyone we spoke to wants to get involved and we're now planning for a September launch. ICP have now committed to our programme by registering themselves as a good cause on our website and we will now work with them to engage with each of their partner associations - usually the national headteachers association in each country - and identify the schools who will join us to launch the project in September. We already have strong links with Uganda and Iraq and will be working separately with the government and education authorities in those two countries. By putting the students as the leaders of this movement for change, we can empower them to help support their own schools, reduce their carbon footprints and improve their own health, as well as helping to support all the other needy causes in their communities and to help 1000s of other international campaigns worldwide. [Return To Top] |
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One-To-One Sessions In Trafalgar Square. From 10th August, we've been allocated our own workspace in a prestige office on Trafalgar Square. From that date on, for the next three months, we'll be arranging short sessions throughout each day, to meet with people there, on a one-to-one basis - in short 30-minute sessions - to discuss what they can do for The Wisdom Trust and show them how they can get involved straight away in our Summer campaign, and make a difference every single day. If you'd like to take advantage of one of these 30-minute slots, to find out what you can do, simply contact us by return email, detailing which days and times suit you and we'll get back to you with confirmation of your allotted time slot. [Return To Top] |
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The Wisdom Trust is committed to playing its part in improving our environment, as well as helping to relieve poverty and improve world health, and within a few clicks, you too can be part of our work. We offer a unique experience, allowing people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with charities worldwide, and enabling them to learn or contribute to our work whenever they can. We work hard to make this as easy as possible; our education and fundraising programmes run at no cost to our members and both are linked to our loyalty credits scheme, so anything our members do to help the global community also benefits themselves!
By working together, we can make a difference. We can improve our world for the benefit of all. Join us today and be part of our future. With The Wisdom Trust, even doing just a little can still help a lot. |
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Total raised so far:
£15178.27(more info) |
