The biting cold season approaches and there are more homeless people on the streets than ever before due to a plethora of reasons with one of these being mental health issues. As you can probably imagine the winter months are some of the hardest on the street. At The Delicate Mind, we’re raising money in order to do our little bit to help out. We’re going to be putting together a backpack to hand out on the streets of Birmingham to the homeless and rough sleepers. We’re currently looking at the 29th as our date of delivery. Contained in this backpack will be all sorts of essentials such as toiletries to food and warm clothing, as well as a laminated piece of paper containing information that will connect them to services that can help them in the long term.

What we’re looking for is donations to help put these packs together.

In the pack we want to include items such as:

• Toothbrushes, toothpaste, and toothy tabs

• Soaps, Shower gels and towels

• Tissues

• Sanitary products for all genders and none.

• Reusable water bottles

• Warm clothing such as jumpers, scarves, hats, tops, hoodies, trousers, socks gloves, underwear, thermal vests, shoes etc.

• Sleeping bags/Sleeping material

• Umbrellas

• Backpacks

• Dried Fruit

• Food/Water distribution on the two days

• A piece of laminated paper with a detailed list of services that can help them further (laminated to last longer)

However, cash isn’t the only way you can help! We know that not everyone can give money, so we’d particularly appreciate any donations of any of the previously mentioned items, which can be even as a small as a single item like a hat you don’t wear anymore. No donation is too small to make a meaningful impact.

We are aiming to create fifty backpacks. If we manage to exceed this goal, we will expand the volume of backpacks we are giving out and any/all surplus money will be sent to various homeless charities and organisations that we will ask our volunteers to choose collectively once the fundraiser ends. We will also for the sake of transparency be publishing all our financial records so we can show those who have kindly donated us their money how exactly it is being used.

During the duration of our fundraiser we will be updating you with the progress we are making and already have sourced clothing and cleaning materials.

Alongside this we are currently reaching out to organisations about sourcing items for the packs and we're looking for more to help make this project a reality. If anyone has information about charities who do projects like this, we would love to get in contact with them as we at The Delicate Mind believe very strongly in cooperation.

Any support you can give will make a difference in vulnerable people’s lives this holiday season.

Please email us at: contact@thedelicatemind.org.uk to arrange any and all collections and donations as well as inquiries about volunteering with the hand outs on the 29th.

Thank you for your time.