Help Choose RAG's Charities of the Year 2016!

Each year RAG selects a Local, National and International charity to support and they want your help! Please have a read through the descriptions of the charities and select which one you support. The results we be announced after the polls have closed.

Please note that these polls are only open to full members of Imperial College Union - please log in to the website in order to vote.

Update Thursday 27 October

It has been brought to our attention that these polls were originally set to allow anonymous votes to be cast. We’ve now corrected this issue, and in order to ensure the results reflect only the opinions of Imperial College London students, all votes not associated with a valid student login will not be counted towards the final result.

Local Charities

The RSPCA exists to help abused and neglected animals in England and Wales. We rescue, rehabilitate and re-home thousands of animals every year. Our National Call Centre receives a call about cruelty every 28 seconds! Our 340 Inspectors respond to these calls 24/7 to assess the situation and potentially save an animal from neglect and abuse.

Our mission is to prevent cruelty, promote kindness and alleviate suffering of all animals. We want a world where all animals are respected and treated with compassion.

Our mission is to provide the highest quality palliative and holistic care services to babies, children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions and their families in our local communities. Working in partnership we will deliver these services whenever and wherever our families need them.

Noah's Ark Children's Hospice is a community based hospice service providing support for children and young people with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their families in Central and North London. Our mission is: from all over the UK and abroad who are diagnosed with the most complex, life-threatening conditions.

  • To provide care and support for children and young people from birth who have a life-limiting or life-threatening condition. Our aim is to enable them to live full lives and to achieve their aspirations;
  • To ensure that families are able to live life as fully as possible whilst their child is still alive and go on to face the future with hope after bereavement.

Football Beyond Borders uses football as an engagement tool to tackle challenging behaviour, social exclusion and raise the level of educational attainment of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - many of whom are at risk of exclusion.

What we do: We engage our young people through our football themed curriculum, which develops literacy, creativity and problem solving skills through football.

Why we deserve your support: We exist to tackle the linked problems of educational underachievement and social exclusion for young people from deprived communities in London.

What we can offer: We are an aspirational organisation, which is looking forward to organise special fundraising event and challenges and provide unique volunteering opportunities.

National Charities

FoodCycle builds communities by serving nutritious, three-course meals to vulnerable people – all made from food that would otherwise go to waste. In 29 locations across the country, we train and support volunteers to collect surplus food, take it to a spare kitchen and transform it into a healthy meal. We then serve a three-course, sit-down meal to people at risk of food poverty and isolation, creating a supportive, inclusive environment where everyone is treated with warmth and dignity, and made to feel welcome. Our guests include older people, mental health service users and those affected by homelessness. After coming to eat with us 82% of guests have made friends and feel more a part of the community. As one guest put it, “you come for the food, but you stay for the community… It’s more than food, it’s making friends and we’re all in the same boat."

We’re the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research. Our vision is to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured. Thanks to research, cancer survival has doubled over the past 40 years, with 1 in 2 now beating their disease. But there is still so much to do.

Today, around 946 people will be diagnosed with cancer. Half of them sadly will not survive their disease. We’re accelerating progress to see 3 in 4 people survive cancer within the next 20 years. We are the only ones fighting over 200 cancers, including the ones that matter most to you and your friends.

Our mission is to prevent, control and cure cancer. We’re here to save more lives, add more years, make treatments kinder, inform the public, expel fear and cure.

We work for a society in which every person is equally valued. We believe that people with disabilities should have the freedom to live their lives the way they choose – with the opportunity and support to live independently, to contribute economically and to participate fully in society.

That belief is at the heart of everything we do. We offer skills-based learning courses, inclusive sport activities, employment programmes, volunteering opportunities and digital inclusion projects that benefit thousands of disabled people. Through our Change100 programme, we support students and graduates with disabilities to gain paid internships in exciting industries. We also provide care where needed in people’s own homes; supported rented accommodation; residential homes; day centres; and respite services.

We campaign alongside people with disabilities to challenge unfairness in society and change government policies for the better. We work internationally to in 54 countries, promoting inclusive education across Asia and Africa.

Our mission is to reduce the harmful impacts that bullying has upon physical health, mental health, self-esteem, performance and future prospects of young people, by providing crucial advice and support. We want to increase the amount of young people who report and seek help and support as our Annual Bullying Survey 2016 found that 40% of young people do not tell anyone that they are experiencing bullying.

Our mission is also to prevent bullying from happening in the first place, by encouraging young people who are bullying to talk to others about the issues that are affecting them and teaching them positive ways to respond to things like stress and trauma.

Overall, we want to help build a generation of young people who are compassionate, secure and resilient and world which is fair and free from bullying.

React's mission is to improve the quality of life for terminally ill children cared for by financially disadvantaged families by providing Specialist Medical, Safety & Hygiene, Mobility and Educational Equipment, Respite Holidays and Funeral Expenses. We believe that all children deserve the comfort, dignity and the opportunity to participate in life as fully as possible ensuring that children with life-shortening illnesses do not go without the equipment essential for their well-being in their short lives.

Medical advances mean terminally ill children are living longer and there is a range of specialist equipment produced to meet their needs, unfortunately, React cannot respond positively to all requests due to lack of money. A quote from a mother caring for her terminally ill son:

“Thank you for providing my son’s specialist bed. This has already helped to reduce the pain he was experiencing and we cannot thank you enough".

Our Mission at the British Heart Foundation is to win the fight against Cardiovascular disease and our vision is a world where people don't die prematurely from heart disease.

Over the past months we have been reviewing our strategic approach with the help of staff, supporters and stakeholders.

Our new strategy will give us powerful focus in our fight for every heartbeat, and enable us to lead the fight against cardiovascular disease more effectively.

We'll continue the fight through our pioneering heart research, vital prevention and survival activity and ensuring quality care and support.

International Charities

In sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of the population live below the poverty line. Farm Africa believes in change from the ground up. We don’t deliver a short-term fix; instead we help find long-term solutions, helping farmers grow more, sell more and sell for more so they can provide for their families and educate their children.

 

We provide the livestock, seeds, tools and training farmers need to set up small businesses. These range from rearing livestock or growing crops to producing honey – but they all have one thing in common - helping farming families in eastern Africa lift themselves out of poverty. Imperial students will help empower farmers to change their lives and transform their communities. In return, we offer volunteering opportunities, exciting challenges and everything you need to make your fundraising successful."

ActionAid is a leading international development charity working in over 45 countries across the world. They put women and girls living in extreme poverty at the heart of their work; empowering them to change the lives of their communities. Annually ActionAid support 15 million people by focusing on education, hunger, women’s rights, tax injustices and responding to emergencies.

ActionAid work directly with local people to develop practical, hands-on support that leads to lasting change. When responding to emergencies, ActionAid not only provide immediate relief, they also empower communities to build back better so they are more resilient should a disaster strike again.

Legs4Africa collect unwanted prosthetic legs in the UK and find Africa partners that can readapt them to fit the regions amputees.

Our 3 objectives are:

  • To collect as many of the 5000 prosthetic legs that are discarded every year in the UK as possible, through collections from NHS hospitals, private hospitals and from individual donors. We also collect tools and materials for adapting legs, and other mobility equipment.
  • To seek out partnering hospitals in Africa that have the tools and expertise to readapt prosthetic legs.
  • To deliver prosthetic legs, tools and mobility equipment to our African partners, who skillfully readapt limbs to help the World’s poorest disabled people walk again, and regain their independence.

VITAL's mission is to provide a meaningful childhood to disadvantaged children by improving the quality of life through equal education, healthcare, protective services and sustainable community development.

Many of the children we work with are street/slum children, former victims of violence/sexual abuse and child labourers. One cannot imagine the horrors which afflict their daily lives but it is our utmost important mission to ensure all the compassion and generosity of our donors goes directly towards fighting the injustice of child poverty. For this reason 100% of all donations go straight to the children in need.

We favour bottom-up approaches in which we delve deep into the abyss of a problem in order to find its antidote. Through research, experience and expertise of the area we ensure children have access to their basic rights and we collaborate with police and government to achieve precisely this.

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IMPERIAL COLLEGE UNION
Beit Quadrangle
Prince Consort Road
London SW7 2BB
Registered Charity No: 1151241
Tel: 020 7594 8060
Fax: 020 7594 8065
Email: union@imperial.ac.uk
Twitter: @icunion
VAT Reg No. GB 240 5617 84
imperialcollegeunion.org