Trustees Report (2008 / 2009)

Press Release – 2.

01.07.2009

This last year has been a voyage of discovery. We have continued to enjoy the patronage of AEP UK Ltd who provided the majority of the funds we need to develop our services. We were offered an unconditional license of their product which has recently been branded as SNAP4Business. This is a white labelled social networking application platform.

We decided to concentrate our efforts on a web site dedicated to providing a service that enables users to discuss and be involved in charity. This is achieved by providing an environment that uses the social networking facilities provided within the platform.
We launched the BETA version of the web site mid February 2008. We continue to develop the functionality and user friendliness of the site. We are confident that in the new year we will be able to publicise a fully functional site.

In November 2008 we moved to new, more prestigious and spacious offices under a specially negotiated deal offered by the landlord. The difference has been startling, for a similar cost that we were paying for a single office previously, we now enjoy shop front visibility and a higher profile overall. We have sufficient space to cater for a variety of volunteers. The space will also enable us to offer more services in the future.

We have negotiated with the extremely popular restaurant chain ‘Red Hot – The World’s Buffet’ a special deal that enables us to send parties under our Birthday Dream Party project.
Over the year we have had various volunteers, from all over the world, moderating the content for the site. We are now able to offer this service on a 24hr basis. Other volunteers are more local meaning that we have access to a variety of skills from general administration to web design and computer hardware. We have also worked closely with the local representatives of Employment and Disability Services (EADS). Most notably we have enjoyed working with Michael Bray who has decided to continue working with us on a voluntary basis since he enjoyed his time with us.

We have also had a more experienced volunteer, Michael Hollins, who saw the potential of the platform we have developed and has taken us in a new direction by branding one of the functionalities we offer separately as ‘Zonadream’. This has been developed independently and will be launched in July or August 2009. We expect that a national PR launch and an incentive offering £10,000 worth of registration fees will generate between 100,000 and 1m users. This is intimately linked with the friendship-zone web site, so every user will also be encouraged to communicate via this medium. As this generates funds, we will be able to offer more value to the various projects that we support.

We are looking forward to this next year as our projects mature. I look forward to being able to report more specifically about the number of individuals and communities that we have been able to support.