2018 Review: Plans and Projects of the British Charitable Foundation

We have reached the end of 2018, an incredible year for the British Foundation: we launched a new social project for the elderly, increased the number of people we support, facilitated hundreds of medical appointments and ended this cycle with a sense of achievement and the motivation to do even more in 2019!

2018 in Review: Social programmes

We are an NGO focused on older people; our main objective is to improve the lives of the population aged over 60 in São Paulo. Let’s recap our main achievements in the social sector in 2018:

A new project: Community Centre for the Elderly (CCI)

We have already written extensively about our Centre for Social Centre for the Elderly, which opened on 16 October and concluded its 2018 activities on 15 December, with a ‘Sarau da Maturidade’ organised during the two months of the project.

During this period, we welcomed 39 different elderly participants and received extremely positive feedback, which has ensured the project will continue along the same lines in 2019. Therefore, at the end of January we will resume activities at the Butantã branch of Cultura Inglesa.

The Cuidar Programme: consolidated and expanded

At the end of last year, I wrote here on this blog that elderly beneficiaries of the Cuidar Programme were accompanied to more than 200 medical appointments in 2017. In 2018, we exceeded 300 accompaniments in the Cuidar Programme! And, in the final months of the year, this figure rose to over 50 – indicating an even stronger growth trend for 2019.

In 2018, we were also able to extend this project to elderly residents at the care home we support in our Multiply Programme . This expansion was only possible thanks to the support we received from 99 through its call for proposals 99 Transforma, and we hope that new partners will help us with this cause next year.

Multiplicar Programme: bringing together older people and young people

The Multiplicar Programme also received our attention in 2018. In addition to the medical check-ups we began to provide, as described in the previous section, we continued to facilitate volunteering initiatives with schools and companies at the institution we support.

In this regard, the main initiative of the year was the volunteering by pupils from the St Paul’s School at Casa Madre Teodora, where around 20 pupils spent a whole morning with the elderly residents. There was breakfast, bingo, manicures, music and lots of fun for everyone!

An increase of almost 50 per cent in the number of beneficiaries

Thanks to these initiatives, we have managed to increase the total number of people assisted by the FBB by almost 50 per cent compared with 2017, reaching 156 older people who have benefited directly from our work here at the British Foundation in 2018!

This is a very significant increase, demonstrating that we are on the right track to have an ever-greater positive impact on the lives of vulnerable older people in São Paulo.

2018 Review: Institutional

We also had good news in other areas, such as the arrival of new partners, charity events and public recognition of our work. Let’s take a look at them:

Public recognition: the Silver Salva

In 2018, we also received a tribute from São Paulo City Council in recognition of our 70 years of work on behalf of older people: the Silver Medal , the highest honour awarded by the City Council to organisations that carry out work of significance to the municipality.

Charity event: The Queen’s Birthday

We also benefited from a charity event organised by British Society São Paulo. In June, around 220 British people and their descendants gathered to celebrate the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II , and all proceeds from the evening went towards our social projects.

With the help of the audience and our sponsors, we raised R$ 50,000 to fund our social projects in the second half of 2018.

Other achievements

To conclude our 2018 in Review, we must remember the various leisure options we provide for the elderly – a large proportion of which were made possible with the support of our partners – and our registration with the Municipal Council for Older People , which can help us secure tax incentives for any donations we receive in the future.

We are also heavily involved with Giving Day and have managed to engage new donors and partners for our cause.

Plans for 2019

We are reviewing our 2018 Retrospective to define the 2019 objectives. We can confirm that the Community Centre will continue to operate in Butantã and that the ‘Cuidar’ and ‘Multiplicar’ programmes will continue to provide the same level of service.

We will also seek new partners to help us expand our social projects and enable us to come closer to fulfilling our mission, which is “to preserve the dignity and promote the wellbeing of vulnerable older people, whose independence and support networks have been compromised by the passage of time, thereby giving back to those who have done so much for us”.

Did you enjoy our 2018 Review? Would you like to get involved or become a partner so you can be part of the 2019 edition? Leave a comment or send an email to contato@fundacaobritanica.org.br and we’ll be delighted to chat.

By Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy end to the year on behalf of the Board and the team at the British Foundation!