Happy Christmas Everyone and Reflections of 2009

Kylie Cloke

By Kylie Cloke, Chair of OCD-UK

As we head towards the end of 2009, and into 2010 – I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on the past year and look forward to the upcoming one.

OCD-UK has gone from strength to strength during 2009, and I am extremely proud to be part of a team that has continued to pilot innovative new ideas and projects to further raise the awareness of OCD amongst the general public, the health professionals and within the media, a team that provides help, guidance and support to those affected by this debilitating illness, and a team that continues to campaign for improved access to quality care and treatment for those affected by OCD. As we head into 2010, I will be leading the team to continue with our core missions and to pilot even more innovative new ideas.

I would like to take this moment to thank a numerous amount of people – far too many people to list individually!! Firstly, and it goes without saying, that a huge thank you needs to go to Ashley. Without his hard work, passion and determination, OCD-UK would not exist, and would not be the fantastic charity that it is. I am sure some could argue that he is just doing his job – but I think we all know it goes much further than that.  

I would like to thank Maria Bavetta – Chair of OCD-UK until October 2009. Her professionalism and devotion to OCD-UK has been immense, and she had led the team to wonderful new heights – I aim to follow in her footsteps, and continue with the hard work that she started.

Next, I would like to thank all our volunteers who give up their time freely for the benefit of the charity. From our Administrators and Moderators , who offer support and guidance, and ensure our forums run as smoothly as possible to our Proof Readers who ensure our magazines and literature reads correctly, to our E-Mail Support team who answer queries and questions sent to OCD-UK, to our Cheer Squad who stand for hours supporting our runners across the country. The list of volunteers is truly endless, but without each and every one of them – our Charity would not run as effectively as it does.

I would like  to thank our fundraisers. Whether it be a coffee morning, or running a 26 mile marathon around the streets of London – the funds they raise for us is greatly needed to ensure our financial stability, and to allow us to lead further forward.

And last but by no means least, to all of you – our members. Our community is amazing!! There is always someone around on the forums to offer help, understanding and support when needed – to help someone who wants to understand more about the diagnosis they have received, to help individuals who are undergoing treatment and just needs to rant and rave, and to be a listening ear for those that are struggling. From personal experience, I know that I wouldn’t be where I am now without the charity and forums – and I am sure the same can be said for many. Thank you for spending your free time to offer help and support to others, for building up a safe community that allows those affected by OCD the chance to talk without fear of judgement and for donating your membership money to ensure financial stability for OCD-UK.

With just a week of 2009 left, I do hope that you have some happy memories of 2009. For those of you that have overcome OCD during 2009, I wish that 2010 remains an OCD free time for you. For those of you that have made progress with your battle against OCD, I hope 2010 continues to provide more progresses, and for those that have found 2009 a hard year, I hope that 2010 brings some relief. Wherever we are with our individual battles against OCD, OCD-UK will continue to offer help, support and guidance during the upcoming year.

I would like to wish you all a Happy Holiday and a Prosperous New Year.

Kylie
Xxx

Peace and Goodwill to all Men – Pah!

By Ashley Fulwood

Today is Christmas Eve and much of my day as been spent talking to the police following another attempt to defraud our charity bank account! Yep, you are reading me right! Earlier in the Summer we found two mysterious amounts had been taken from our bank account, and then this week our bank wrote to us to decline the setting up of a Standing Order from our account because it did not quite meet with the instruction we had given our bank for our account. It turns out that someone was trying to setup a Standing Order from our account for £96 weekly for three weeks over Christmas, just small amounts which would not get noticed during the Christmas period with statement delays etc.

Can you believe that someone would actually try and steal from a charity? It’s certainly making me less full of Christmas joy and glee I can tell you. Humbug anyone?
Thankfully our bank protects us and on each of the three occasions that it has happened we have been refunded our money that you our members have worked so hard to donate. This in itself is a problem because the Police refuse to investigate on our instruction because we have not lost out, the bank have. The bank doesn’t seem to care because it is such a small amount. However, what they do not appreciate is that on each occasion it does cost our charity time and money in phone calls, and at least a couple of hours of my time is spent writing reports, talking to the banks and police which could be better spent helping our community or developing the charity.

We are also the victim of fraud in another unusual way too, often criminals who have stolen bank or card details will make small donations of £5-£10 to charities to test the card works before they then go on to spend bigger. Our own charity debit card was used to make a £10 donation to Oxfam in the Summer and then we have also received small donations from people which later turn out to be not genuine. This then leads to the credit card company trying to take the money back of us, and often our online transaction provider, RBS Worldpay then try and charge us £10 admin fee called a Chargeback fee. Thankfully that situation has only happened twice, but again it shows that fraudsters are really using Charities for their own means.

 The downside of this is that now if OCD-UK receive an unusual donation I have to email the donater just to check it is genuine, how sad is that?  (please don’t let that put you off donating though, we really do need your support), and you can always email us when you donate to let us know, in fact I would love to hear from you anyway if you are kind enough to donate, it gives me the opportunity to thank you much more personally.

At the end of the day OCD-UK is protected by the bank, but what it means is I have to check our statements on a weekly basis, so it simply adds additional workload to my time, so I guess it does cost the charity in that respect.

This is just one of the many unusual jobs that I have to deal with here at OCD-UK towers on a regular basis.

I am now running out of Humbugs.. Christmas seasonal joy to one and all? Pah,  not going to let the low life *Bleep Bleep* steal my Christmas joy too… so wishing all the charities friends and supports a very Happy Christmas and I look forward to working with you all in 2010.

From a nearly Scrooge like Ashley.

Christmas Compulsive Reading – It’s Snow Joke

By Ashley Fulwood

We missed our own set deadline for our Christmas 2009 magazine, in fact the fantastic Christmas cover I designed is now redundant L Oh well, New Year theme for the cover then J

Still we have done well, we have already rolled out three jam packed magazines in 2009, and this will be the 4^th produced in 2009 (distributed in early 2010 though).

Our Christmas magazine service disrupted due to extreme snow… It’s snow joke! Well actually it is, but hey, everything else in this country grinds to a halt with a bit of snow, so we might as well follow the example and blame it on the snow!

The actual truth is that at OCD-UK we do not have the luxury of throwing money at everything so have to make the best use of our limited resources, for that reason we have kept all design in-house to keep the costs down. In fact I have had to learn both Quark and Adobe In-Design to be able to put our magazines together over the last couple of years! This means that the design of the content I have to slot in between other jobs, and sometimes, like now an influx of demand for my time means something hits the back burner for a few days, and the magazine is it! The other problem is that we simply have so much content, trying to fit 38 pages into 20 pages is proving a tad difficult, still that’s a nice problem to have. Charlotte has done a great job helping with the written content preparing it all ready for design.

OCD does not stop for Christmas, so neither will I and I will be working on the magazine over Christmas and hope to send it to print the first working week of January, with then a 10 day turnaround for printing and dispatch to you guys.

I hope you will think it is worth the wait, because it will be and I hope the New Year magazine will be a great start to 2010 for our members.

Whatever you’re doing over the holiday season, have a great one and be kind to yourself J

Ashley

P.S. Any designers reading this willing to donate a dozen hours every 2 or 3 months to take over the artwork of the magazine from me would be most welcome?