Never heard of you

The biggest problem Children North East has is that the general public have never heard of us.

For most of the last century we were called 'The Poor Children's Homes Association' and everyone had heard of us. From 1932 we had a prominent Headquarters building in the middle of Newcastle with PCHA in huge letters on it - you could not miss it. Even today the older generation still remember the PCHA, some tell you about dropping off unwanted toys for the 'poor children' at it's door. But in the early 1970's that building was demolished to make way for the Eldon Square shopping precinct and in 1987 the name changed to 'Children North East'. Since then, apart from the centenary celebrations in 1991 and the odd splash since, not much attention has been paid to promoting the charity.

So before we can start raising money, first we have to make sure the general public have heard of us. Hardly a week goes by when we don't send a press release or a letter to the local papers but they are not all printed and often when they are it is in obscure parts of the paper. What we need are a well-written features about what the charity does, some of the problems facing the people we help and how we help them, particularly young people. Maybe some pieces about particular members of staff or volunteers as well. And not just the newspapers but in other ways too so people will have at least heard of us.