We have been sending out Christmas cards to our beneficiaries in the hope that they enjoy Christmas with their friends and families, and with our wish they have health and happiness in 2010.

It is good to hear from some of them and industry friends - some using EEIBA cards which is fantastic.

It is also an astounding and sad truth that some of the people we look after will be alone during the holidays, which makes the greetings from EEIBA more appreciated.

If the feedback from our governing body (Council) is anything to go by, which is usually the case, 2010 may see continuing hard times for us all.

This makes the letter and cheque from Carillion we have received so special. Their staff nominated EEIBA as one of 50 charities to benefit from a special series of events, marking their 10th anniversary as an independent public company. They said: “We hope this [donation] will go some way towards supporting the excellent work which is being done by EEIBA.”

“The cost of keeping grandchildren in the family can be life below the poverty line” is the headline to an article in The Times (26 October 2009) which goes on to say that “... more than a third of grandparents who look after their grandchildren full time to prevent them being taken into care live below the poverty line”. We are told that some 200,000 grandparents are looking after their grandchildren so keeping them out of (costly) foster and residential care.

The research by the Grandparents Plus charity behind the articles resonates with me. I have been thinking about how people live with poverty and impact which charities like EEIBA can have on individuals and households and how we can describe what we do in a way which engages with our supporters and donors, to enthuse and encourage them. I am also mindful that we have several welfare cases where we are supporting grandparents to look after their grandchildren.

Poverty can be said to be about not having the basic necessities of modern life. To be sure, these “basic necessities” in Great Britain bear little resemblance to other places in the world. And while we can argue about what is meant exactly by “basic necessities”, the impact of poverty in this country, and worldwide, is considerable.

Individuals and households who cannot engage fully in modern society makes us all the poorer, economically and socially. The reasons why people face poverty can be many and various (the impact of redundancy, the health of a key family member and other social issues, such as divorce). Also, some in our community face a lifetime of low incomes due to social, education, mobility, health and employment issues and prospects.

Education and welfare systems seem to provide little by way of training and support, as a life learning skill, to help us deal with crises and difficult circumstances as well as fairly basis budgeting skills.

So, as a result, some manage with living on the breadline much better than others; some just don’t cope very well and need our support and training to do so.

Anyone in the social work field will tell you that living on low income grinds away at the social fabric of families and households. Perhaps too, the prospect of little by way of change and improvement in personal and health circumstances presents an even greater significant contributory factor to feelings of well-being and optimism. The reality of coping with poverty day to day and in the future can depress even the most positive of souls. Poverty is really a huge energy block.

So the effect and impact on individuals and families when, however this achieved, someone from EEIBA (or an organisation like us) reaches out to help must, for many, be a cathartic moment. Just listening is a huge boon. Offering practical solutions and helping to think about potential ways forward makes such a difference to how people feel about themselves.

The prospect and reality of sourcing benefits and allowances, support from other organisations and our own cash grants programme must literally be seen as a godsend to so many. I think about the pensioner couple whom we helped by claiming Pension Credits and other allowances, of which they were completely unaware. By means of our knowledge and skill, EEIBA was able to almost double this couple’s weekly income, without giving them a penny of charity grant.

The impact on them was huge and lifted them out of poverty, giving them the prospect of a more positive future. Families facing the key income earner being made redundant must induce huge worries about how to manage day to day living and how to give the family the opportunities which loving and caring parents would wish their children to be able to grasp. Offering help, being there to help, is a sure way of demolishing some, if not all, of these brick walls which so many face.

It is all about the strong helping the less strong so that all of us can live full and enriching lives. As someone said to me recently, “thank goodness our industry has a charity like EEIBA”. I agree. Our commitment, by the volunteers and Branch network of supporters working in conjunction with the charity’s Trustees and staff, does so much to contribute towards the well-being of so many in our society who face such hard and difficult times.

What we have to do is to make sure EEIBA is known and understood as a key driver towards finding solutions and relieving need.

On Friday 2 October, ECA London Region’s Grand Dinner and Ball was held at the London Lancaster Hotel. Thanks to ECA Regional Manager, Malcolm Conby and the efforts of ECA friends, this longstanding social event raised much needed funds for EEIBA. I am not sure how much we will be receiving but I know Malcolm will be in touch shortly with some good news.

The following Monday saw President, Ian Humphreys, at EEIBA’s Scottish Forum of Branches in Edinburgh. Ian had been to the SELECT Annual Awards in Glasgow and then went to the long established Yorkshire Ridings Branch annual PowerBall in Harrogate.

He joined me and colleagues Pat Sheldrake, Claire Paton and Tracey Mackay with EEIBA Branch supporters in Scotland. We talked about our new governance structures following Council’s decision to re-organise its sub-committees which arose from some really helpful feedback we received from an earlier Branch Forum about our decision making processes.

We went through the new staff structure in relation to the welfare caseworkers and then studied a detailed finance report while looking at some of our fund-raising tools. One of the agenda items was about Scottish identity. The general consensus of the meeting was EEIBA’s awareness is poor throughout Scotland and it was felt that a lack of feedback from functions to participating companies does not help our cause. Some of the suggestions put forward including use of posters to be made available at trade counters and staff canteens, using some of the trade magazines, particularly CABLEtalk and emailing news and information to supporters.

It was also pointed out how helpful it would be to have more Scottish beneficiaries included in the case histories part of our website. I was also really pleased that a couple of the Branch supporters are happy for their name to be put forward for our new contract visitors to undertake some welfare visits in Scotland and I will follow that up in the next few weeks to make sure they are involved.

The next day I had a chance to call into the Falkirk office and to introduce myself less formally to Tracey Mackay and to pick up on several projects and issues with Claire Paton. And then onto the Electrical Distributors’ Association’s annual Scottish Function.

The EDA Scottish Function is an unusual, albeit regular, event in the industry calendar. More than fifty years ago, when the industrial manufacturing base was centred around the Midlands, Scottish wholesalers devised a very simple formula to invite manufacturing colleagues to Scotland for informal discussions and contact.

Until then, with communications as they were, they had few opportunities to meet manufacturing colleagues in the supply chain. Even though communications have improved immeasurably, it is still a very popular event for people in electrical manufacturing and wholesaling to meet up informally over a period of a few days to catch up, update, have a whinge and moan, resolve issues, make new friends and just to spend some time out of the usual hurly burly of commercial life, getting to know each other.

I have been invited to this event for more than ten years now and every time I have been, it has proved its worth in time, trouble and effort to attend. This year, with sponsorship for the forthcoming powerBall my main priority, I had a golden opportunity to undertake some discreet “begging” at some of the sessions. I brought home with me more than £2,000 in cash from fund-raising during the Function, together with a valuable voucher for a holiday package at Gleneagles Hotel which we will use at powerBall. I was able to tie up some sponsorship deals for powerBall and recruit three potential runners in the London Marathon. I need to also follow through with contacting some new faces in the industry to leverage more support for the charity.

Happily I was also joined for part of the Scottish Function by Ian Humphreys. It was helpful for him to meet and greet so many people, especially as we will meet up with many of them at powerBall in the next few weeks.

It seems our industry colleagues will support their charity even though they are facing very tough economic conditions. They share our view about keeping as much as we can in the calendar. They were very pleased to learn there will be more than 1,100 people sitting down to powerBall this year and that our Branch events continue to provide welcome income streams and regional focus.