This year, the theme for Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘nature’.
The Mental Health Foundation recently carried out some research into the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Results showed ‘going for walks outside was one of our top coping strategies and 45% of us reported being in green spaces had been vital for our mental health’.
The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for MS is a cross-political party group interested in MS. We organise this group and will be holding a series of online sessions this year, exploring the experiences of employment for people with MS.
We want to increase the awareness and understanding of MS. And we want to influence MPs to consider disabled people, and people with MS, in their decisions, questions and work when it comes to employment, and addressing the unemployment caused by the pandemic.
As a company, we’re required to have a registered office address recorded with Companies House for receiving official mail, such as from HMRC.
It’s the address we need to use when entering into agreements or submitting formal documents, such as fundraising bids. And it will appear on our letterhead, and on other formal documents such as invoices and purchase orders. The registered office address is the same for each of the nations, even though we have different office locations.
Over the past year, many of us will have been invited to social events online. Festivities have been arranged, but food and drink has had to be ‘Bring Your Own’.
Due to increased demand, current supporter group Mary’s Snowflake Creations are looking for volunteer knitters and crocheters to join the team. Catherine and Winnie create beautiful knitted and crocheted items for us, and have raised over £7,000 since 2014.
Catherine said: “After many years of unexplained and ‘strange’ ill-health, I was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis in 2012, after a particularly severe brain stem attack left me quite poorly with significant disabilities.
We've updated our guidance about assessing grants at local groups, and amended the application documents to reflect changes and remove mentions of the national Grants Team.
It’s estimated that there are around 130,000 people in the UK living with MS, plus a further million people with a close connection to MS. By comparison, our total MS Society community of supporters (volunteers, campaigners, fundraisers, advisers, donors, etc) is around 180,000.
Last year we told you about the new online and offline experience we were developing for our MS community in relation to our membership changes. This experience is called For you.
As part of For you, we’ve been busy working on a new digital platform to give existing members additional online benefits and provide new joiners with an enhanced experience on our website. And we’re very excited to announce that it will be launching in June to existing members!
