Happy Not Brexit Day dear readers! Like Society Diary, you are probably disappointed that the Union Jack bunting you bought in preparation for our independence day will have to stay in the cupboard next to the stockpiled all day breakfast tins for a few weeks longer than planned. In the meantime, let’s have a look at some of this week’s highlights in charity news.
Kid Boss
Like everyone, Diary was a massive fan of the 2017 Dreamworks film The Boss Baby, where Alec Baldwin voices Theodore Templeton, a baby with the mind of an adult. Thankfully the producers of the film have responded to public demand and are in the process of making a sequel, it is slated for a 2021 release. This is clearly too long for any reasonably film fan to wait, so Diary was pleased to hear this week that the Penny Appeal has introduced its own real-life “Kid Boss”.
Inspired by the Charity Commission’s recent report on a lack of young trustees in the sector, the development charity has appointed 11-year-old Shakira Rahman, aka Kid Boss, to share her ideas at an executive level. Rahman will report directly to the charity’s chief executive Aamer Naeem and help to raise awareness of the issues currently facing children in the UK and around the world.
While Diary is slightly disappointed to hear Alec Baldwin was in no way involved in the Penny Appeal’s conception of Kid Boss, it is impressed by the innovative way the charity has tried to engage with its beneficiaries.
Road block
Diary was disappointed to hear this week that charity runner Sarah Wilson has had her place at this year’s London Marathon accidentally removed due to a mix up with her namesake.
The 25-year-old sales analyst from Balham, south London, was told on Monday that a charity official had deleted her race entry thinking it was a duplicate after seeing two people named Sarah Wilson on the list of runners.
While the other Sarah Wilson, a 42-year-old primary school teacher from York will be running her 25th marathon since 2015 on April 28, the south Londoner is now blocked from running her first having missed the 1 February registration deadline.
This seems like the only acceptable way of dropping out of doing a marathon but to her credit, Wilson sounds like she really wants to run. A campaign on social media called #LetSarahRun has sprung up for Wilson, who has raised more than £1,400 for St John Ambulance, but so she has not been given a place.
Fan mail
And finally, you may remember Diary had a bit of a moan last week about never getting sent any freebies. Well it seems we underestimated the sector’s generosity and that what the fundraisers say is true – if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Early this morning Diary’s boss took a phone call that went like this:
Caller: Hi are you responsible for Society Diary? (reader, calls that start this way do not usually end well, it often means that someone has not ‘got’ the joke, or that there is some colossal error in the copy which results in Diary getting its knuckles well and truly rapped).
Editor: Reluctantly, yes. What is the problem this time?
Caller: No problem, after last week we thought we might send a kebab and wanted to check any dietary requirements.
Editor: Oh, um, thanks – they’re not picky…
Anyway big thank you to GoFundMe for thinking of us. Diary was particularly excited by the promise of a kebab as after a few Not Brexit Day Eve beers last night it’s feeling rather fragile – at this stage a kebab will either be kill or cure.
But the editor has requested that in future Diary begs for more useful and sophisticated items that can be enjoyed by non-carnivores, such as chocolates, cheese platters, champagne.
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