Excel London’s showcase of support for those with diverse needs!
A paid subscriber to A Good Thing, Excel London first opened in November 2000, in London’s Royal Docks. Twenty-five years later it has become one of Europe’s largest and most successful venues, hosting some 400 events per year and welcoming around four million visitors from every corner of the globe.
Excel London was certified carbon-neutral in 2022: its vision is to be a sustainability leader. It will shortly open its 25,000-square metre state-of-the-art expansion: this will reduce gas consumption through electric-powered air-source heat pumps to provide heating and fully-electric kitchens. Solar panels will supply onsite renewable electricity, and additional electricity will be supplied from 100% natural renewable sources.
Recently Excel donated a whole array of items via the A Good Thing platform, from colourful balls to post-its and notebooks.
“The company's generosity has enabled me to be more generous”
The Growing Hope Redbridge charity offers free therapy for children and young people (aged 0–18) with additional needs living within the Redbridge area. It also provides support for parents, carers and siblings through via groups and courses.
Jack Davies, Speech and Language Therapist at Growing Hope, collected three boxes of fidget toys from Excel for use by children who attend the charity’s clinic. Many of these children need something to fiddle with, to help them listen, and many of the children with autism and ADHD benefit from such toys.
After collecting the fidget toys, Jack was inspired to share some of them with three churches in the area, helping to make churches more accessible for all.
Jack had lots of good things to say about the experience:
“Communication from A Good Thing and Excel was prompt and helpful, and collection was easy too. I’m pleased to now be able to offer free fidget toys to children who come to our clinic who would really benefit from having something to keep their hands busy with, while engaging in something else. I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to share these amazing tools so widely. Excel’s generosity has enabled me to be more generous. We most definitely will be using A Good Thing again!”
Time for journalling!
The Ashdon Jazz Academy charity supports 160 vulnerable girls and young women aged 11–21 each year living in South London. Through events, projects and mentoring services, the charity works to empower and inspire these young people to overcome the negative impacts of isolation, peer pressure, bullying, family breakdown, stress and anxiety – and to reduce the risk of involvement in criminality, gangs and school exclusion.
Patricia Muirhead started the charity in 2015, a year after her daughter Ashdon (who liked to be called “Jazz”) tragically ended her life aged 14. The charity is run by women for girls and young women. It received two boxes of notebooks from Excel to be used in its mentoring programs and other projects.
A photo of notebooks, which have been gifted to the mentors and mentees in recognition of their contribution and engagement,.
Howard Baines, Ashdon Jazz Academy volunteer, told us:
“The notebooks are of a high quality and are ideal to be used as journals by our trained volunteer mentors and the teenage girls they support. The journals will be used to record challenges, feelings, strategies and insights. Due to our limited resources we would not have been able to purchase the notebooks. We have collected three other donations from A Good Thing over the last year and give thanks to all involved.”
Supporting rough sleepers
For over 55 years, St Mungo’s has offered frontline services to those sleeping rough in large cities across the UK. Rough sleeping can be incredibly dangerous, with the threat of illness, exploitation, violence, and abuse ever present. And homelessness can happen to anyone, with more and more people being pushed onto the streets.
A large pile of mixed stationery was collected from Excel by the St Mungo’s Community Housing Association:
“We are a large homelessness project in Hackney, where we host 68 homeless people in our hostel. Our office is open 24/7 and always super busy. Resources like yours are invaluable to services like ours, who (due to ongoing annual reductions in funding and a rise in demand since the cost-of-living crisis) often have to rely on donations and the goodwill of supporters to help get by. Money for items like these would otherwise have to be drawn from other funding streams – which in turn reduces spending in other areas. It is a constant battle of weighing up where money should best be spent.”
Getting behind our communities
At A Good Thing we were delighted to see such a wide array of items being offered by Excel. These donations all help to boost the resilience of organisations that are facing a daily struggle to find funds for their essential work serving the complex needs of the local community.
Other items donated by Excel recently included a monitor and printer, eight chairs and four tables, six boxes of T shirts and a VonHaus folding platform trolley.
