3Keel charity vote 2019

Every year since we founded 3Keel we have contributed money and time to charities close to our hearts – such as Farmability, near our Oxfordshire office. Last year, with the help of clients and partners, we decided to support Buglife, The Children’s Allotment and Tiyeni Africa as well (see our post from last year here).

The vote was such a success we asked contacts which charities to support this year too (we are donating 2% of our net profits from FY2018/19 to charities again). Details of the charities put forward by our team are provided below. The vote has now closed and results will be released soon.

The Children’s Allotment (nominated by Catherine)

The Children’s Allotment is a voluntary group of parents and local residents who have been working for two years to convert a disused plant nursery site into an inclusive, accessible outdoor education space for the local community. To date, thanks to grant funding, donations, and lots of volunteer labour, the site is well on the way to being fully cleared and renovated. Weekly forest school programmes have recently begun running as the rest of the site work continues.

Once fully open, the Children’s Allotment will be an affordable full-time childcare co-op for early-years foundation stage children, with a focus on forest school practice. It will also provide, among other things, drop-in outdoor play sessions, after-school or holiday clubs for primary school aged children, workshops for children and families on food growing and cooking, and facilities for families like clothes/book/toy swaps; local produce shop; and sling/real nappy libraries.

GiveDirectly (nominated by Lyra)

GiveDirectly (givedirectly.org) transfers cash to households in developing countries via mobile phone-linked payment services. This method is in line with growing evidence that cash transfers are one of the most effective anti-poverty tools to not only empower its recipients and give them agency, but also create long-term positive impacts. GiveDirectly targets extremely low-income households and refugees using publicly available data, and it also sends field staff door-to-door to digitally collect data on poverty and enrol recipients. GiveDirectly checks in with people at each stage of the cash transfer process to see how things are going, and you can look at how beneficiaries are investing their money in real time: https://live.givedirectly.org/

GiveDirectly is committed to evaluate its impact: it has conducted one major randomised controlled trial (RCT) which has shown positive results on the impact of cash transfers on assets, earnings, food security, mental health, and domestic violence after on average four months. Several more RCTs in progress are in progress testing for the effects of cash transfers on macroeconomic activity (inflation, business activity, job creation, public finance) and of giving recipients control over payment timing as well as information on the performance of investments made by past recipients.

The Oxford Food Bank (nominated by Alex)

The Oxford Food Bank tackles the dual problem of food waste and food poverty, by picking up and redistributing surplus food that would otherwise be wasted from supermarkets and wholesalers and delivering free of charge to around 100 local charities and community groups throughout Oxfordshire. Their volunteers work 7 days a week to collect, sort and deliver food, with recipients mostly using the donations to provide much needed meals for their clients, including the homeless, elderly, children, refugees and families on low income. In 2018, they were awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

Alex said: “I can’t bear to see waste of any kind and food waste is a huge problem for modern society, with an estimated third of the food produced globally going to waste. Charities such as ‘Oxford Food Bank’ play a vital role in utilising this wasted resource to help those less fortunate. As a small local charity Oxford Food Bank rely solely on the generosity of individuals and organisations to pay for the costs of their base, keeping the five vans on the road and paying their small team of employees.”

Hill End Centre (nominated by Magali)

Hill End is a place where our local community can explore and enjoy the wonders of the natural environment, with the help of people who are passionate about learning, where we can grow the Forest School movement, and improve the education and welfare of our children and young people. Magali said: “I’m nominating Hill End because my kids are stuck indoors all day at school, when all they really want and need is to be learning outdoors!”

Cool Earth (nominated by Will)

Cool Earth’s vision is a world where tropical deforestation and degradation has no role in climate change. With half of the world’s rainforest lost over the past forty years, they have identified that we need a new approach to conservation. The only way to halt destruction is to align the future of the rainforest with the people best placed to protect it. This means placing forest in the hands of the people who rely on its survival for their survival.

Will said: “I’ve spent so much of the past year working with clients on trying to achieve their zero deforestation targets. As we’ve approached the end of our year and I’ve reflected on the outcomes and meaning of our work, I was brought back to the work of Cool Earth, which I’ve personally supported for the last twelve years. It has a unique approach for the charity sector in that it encourages local communities to develop economically through the protection of forest rather than from its destruction. We can all play our part in halting deforestation, but we can only really achieve this if we don’t forget the people that stand to gain and lose the most from their loss.”

3Keel was founded to help organisations navigate these uncertain waters and capitalise on the new opportunities that they will present.

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