If you haven’t seen our amazing Christmas Lights campaign around Leeds this year get into the city centre and see if you can track down the three sites.

Each piece comes with a fantastic caption that reminds us that Christmas isn’t so great for everyone.

So get out there and see them and don’t forget to tweet #brightenthestreets

After 14 months the secret is out!  We received £35,000 from our new best friend Charles Allen.  Keep an eye on the website as we’ll have a personal video message from Charles soon.

The show doesn’t do justice to the amount of time Charles spent with really getting to grips with why we are different, and why we don’t take government money.  The money we received was spent on setting up a new project in Bradford – which started in January of this year – the show was shot September 2010.  Our worker in Bradford, Mat, is having a great impact there on the lives of some very vulnerable people.

If you’re feeling as generous as a proper Charlie why not give a donation

One of the government criticisms often levelled at street based food giving charities is that they potentially enable people to sustain themselves to live on the streets.  It’s a bold claim but one that does need some consideration; it is certainly a concern of ours that we don’t simply offer food but use it as a means to engage and work towards change.

A story covered by the BBC today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15683902 headlined ‘Benefit delays forces people to use food bank, charity says’, details that about a third of people using The Trussell Trust’s free food services were suffering benefit delays.  I think this starts to uncover the true complexity of dependence and reliance and how they relate to acceptability.  If it weren’t for charities like the Trussell Trust the news story would be about people being left with no food at all due to benefit delays.  So using the same argument as in the paragraph above are some charities enabling government to get away with not looking after some sections of society sufficiently to meet their basic needs?

Marler Haley www.marlerhaley.co.uk  are holding a competition for charities to win printed materials from them.  In order to enter they want us to tell them what it would mean to us to win… this is where you come in.  We have obviously just re-branded so getting new banners would be fantastic: http://www.marlerhaley.co.uk/banner-stands/  http://www.marlerhaley.co.uk/outdoor-banners/

But on the other hand we have never really tried using promotional items before to help raise the profile of the charity: http://www.marlerhaley.co.uk/promotional-items/  would mugs or pens appeal and how could we best use them?

It would be great to hear your comments because if we win this we want to make the right decision to raise the profile of our great work as best we can so that we encourage people to get behind us so that we can keep on supporting some of our societies most vulnerable people.

You may have noticed that we look a little different these days. That’s thanks to our friends at McGrath O’Toole and First10 Digital who have helped us with our new brand look and feel.

McGrath O’Toole created our gritty new logo and strapline ‘turning rough lives around’ and were the creative brains behind our new, on the streets graffiti campaign.

The guys at First10 Digital then took our new brand look and feel and have helped us by creating this new website.

Thanks to one and all!

This blog will be used by the team at Simon on the Streets to improve the understanding and development of our work amongst volunteers, service users, funders and the wider community.