Giving
Julie believes in giving back to organisations that make a positive difference in the world. Some of the charities she supports include:
Trussell Trust
Many people are living on or below the ‘bread line’ and rely on food banks to provide meals – this covers everyone from the young to the elderly. It breaks Julie’s heart to think people cannot afford food. It’s a basic human need, and any help by a regular donation supports feeding those in need.
Dogs Trust
This charity created the phrase ‘a dog is for life, not just for Christmas’, and it never puts a healthy dog down. Dogs love humans, and humans don’t always treat the most faithful of animals well. A regular donation supports the feeding, health, homing and rehoming of our four-legged friends. Julie has worked as a consultant for the Dogs Trust and she know the service its team and volunteers tirelessly provide.
Water Aid
Clean water is something we in a first-world country take for granted by the turning of a tap. In many parts of this world, they do not have that luxury and, without clean water, everything suffers, from health, to food, to education, to a future. A regular donation goes a long way.
Smile Train
Most of us have a choice whether we smile or not. Julie herself is a smiler – she believes it brightens the world around and lifts energy, and it is a fabulous thing to be able to do. Now, imagine that you can’t! A relatively simple operation (that a first-world country takes for granted) can cure that, not only providing a smile and inclusion, rather than exclusion, but health rather than disease, plus so much more. A regular donation makes a huge change.
Julie’s highest values in a broad sense are quality education, justice and the planet we inhabit. All of her other donations in the UK and around the world are linked to those areas, whether providing books for children experiencing domestic abuse and fleeing everything they know, to providing bricks to build schools, to planting trees to save the orangutan and, ultimately, the air we breathe.
Any donation made to improve the world we live in and support those who need support through no fault of their own is a good thing to do when we can – whether it be a tin of beans into a food bank or a regular monthly donation to a charity that supports the values you live your life by or is close to your heart.
It is too easy to be inward looking and believe everyone else will – it’s too easy to forget to be grateful for so much. Julie makes regular payments to these charities and world-enhancing initiatives with love and a belief that if we all do a little bit (whatever that looks like), the world becomes a better place, and many littles add up to a lot!
