Charity is right at the heart of the day to day running of Cytoplan. Since conception in 1980, the philosophy of the company has been built on the foundations of helping others and ‘improving the health of the nation’. This ethos emanates from our charitable owners The AIM Foundation, who have been supporting nutrition, health and well-being projects for close to 30 years.
With the year-end almost upon us, we thought it would be a fitting time to provide you, our valued customer, with an update on some of the charitable activities of The AIM Foundation, as well as looking at some of the organisations who we, as a company, have continued to support this year.
The AIM Foundation have recently launched a new website detailing the charitable endeavours that they are currently involved in. You can view the website here.
The AIM Foundation
The AIM Foundation is a family grant-making charity whose overall goal is to support work to promote well-being. They help fund organisations that work to try to prevent social problems that the most vulnerable in our communities face today.
The Foundation is currently focused on the following strategic areas:
Nutrition for Health and Well-being – researching diet and lifestyle programs to optimise cognitive health and increasing the understanding of the importance of nutrition for health amongst health professionals.
Young People – Improving their life chance, particularly around the transition from school to employment and helping prevent mental health problems.
Early Years – Improving the emotional and social development of young children from vulnerable families
Over the last year grants have been made to the following organisations:
Nutrition and well-being
Dementia research by University of Lancaster
The AIM Foundation supported the work of researching and promoting the Bredesen Protocol, a multi-factorial lifestyle and nutrition-based approach to treating and reversing early onset Alzheimers.
Back in 2016, The AIM Foundation funded the initial research conducted by the University of Lancaster, which involved peer-reviewing all of the research literature of multi-factorial treatments for chronic illnesses.
The research paper has recently been accepted for publication by Dementia journal and Garuth Chalfont, a research associate at the University of Lancester, promoted this research at the Alzheimer European Conference in Barcelona in October 2018.
In 2017 a further grant of £50,000 was made towards Phase 2 of the research. This second phase was a case study working with GP’s and other stakeholders to develop a NHS Intervention Protocol.
Professor Bredesen has also recently published his latest research paper, focussing on 100 patients suffering cognitive decline, all of whom showed improvement using his nutrition and lifestyle approach. You can view this paper here.
Young People
Impetus-PEF
There are over 2 million young people in the UK living in poverty. Young people who come from poorer families are far less likely to gain qualifications through school and therefore move into steady employment. Impetus-PEF have developed a new approach to get these young people the support that they need to succeed.
A new three-year grant commitment of £75,000 per year was made by The AIM Foundation to support the research in trying to influence government policy and decision makers to address the difficult transition some young people have from leaving school and going into employment.
Impetus-PEF produced a report “Life After School” that highlighted that Further Education colleges are underperforming in helping students achieve GCSE’s in English and Maths.
Young Minds
The AIM Foundation made a new 3 year commitment of £24,000 to support the policy influencing work of Young Minds. Young Minds is the UK’s leading charity championing the well-being and mental health of children and young people.
They have led an inquiry into the impact of cyberbullying on young people’s mental health and collected evidence and advice to improve best practice in commissioning and delivering adversity and trauma-informed care. In addition, they have produced clearer and new resources to help schools.
The Lighthouse Project
A grant of £15,000 was made to help develop the business plan of the start-up of The Lighthouse; a new and innovative children’s home, which combines a strong education ethos, a stable home and excellent therapeutic support.
The Foundation’s funding was directed through Jamie’s Farm, who work to enable disadvantaged young people a better chance in life, and are strong supporters of The Lighthouse project.
Lord Mayor’s Appeal
This year AIM gave a one-off donation to the Lord Mayor’s Appeal who are trying to address mental health through working with charity partners: Place2Be, Samaritans and On-side Youth Zones.
The AIM Foundation are particularly interested in the work of Place2Be who offer counselling in primary schools, where currently one in five children will experience a mental health difficulty at least once. Not only do Place2Be provide evidence based in-school support for the pupils, but they also train school leaders and teachers.
The Children’s Society
The Foundation issued the second of a multi-year grant of £40,000 to the Community Hidden Harm Awareness Team. They work to improve the physical and emotional wellbeing of children and young people whose parents are misusing substances and are victims of abuse and neglect, resulting in underachievement at school.
Action for Happiness
A new three-year commitment of £15,000 was made to this organisation who are working to reduce the number of people suffering with mental health problems, and increase the number of people feeling good, functioning well and helping others. A grant was made towards their communication campaign, including updating their website.
Early Years
The Wave Trust
A final year’s grant of £25,000 was made to The Wave Trust, who continue to try to reduce the damaging, inter-generational family cycles of childhood neglect and abuse.
The AIM Foundation continue to support their social policy work in demonstrating the need for universal early prevention through partnership working in pioneering communities. They want to help perinatal professionals identify and support the families who need extra help during pregnancy and the first years of the child’s emotional and social development.
Mellow-Parents
Mellow was given funding in 2016 to undertake a full independent evaluation of the impact of Mellow Babies group work with vulnerable parents. The learning has helped improve the outcomes of this work that strengthens the parent-baby attachment.
Institute of Health Visiting
A second-year grant of £35,000 was made towards maintaining and extending the regional forums of Health Visitors to help disseminate best practice and research around helping families needing support in their mental well-being around the time of birth.
Cued Speech
In collaboration with The Sylvia Adams Trust, a new three-year grant of £22,000 per year was made towards the core costs to increase the capacity of this small charity that helps deaf babies learn to communicate through making the spoken language more visual.
The funding has enabled them to obtain other significant funding from BBC Children in Need, make progress with local authorities and develop their online training.
Parent’s First
The second year’s commitment of £25,000 supported this organisation working in deprived areas of Essex to train ‘community parent’ volunteers, so they can provide peer-support to mothers of infants.
Other Support
Water Harvest
This is a small but very effective grass-roots organisation (previously known as Wells for India) that provides safe clean water to rural communities. As a final legacy to Ian Marks, who supported this community development in areas of great economic hardship for many years, AIM made a final larger donation of £20,000.
The charitable work of Cytoplan
All year round, employees of Cytoplan endeavour to participate in a number of charitable activities. This year has been no different. Whether it is a donation to an organisation, or a matched employee donation (Cytoplan match the funds an employee raises through their own charitable endeavours), we have continued to support various organisations throughout 2018, including the below:
Breast Cancer Care – A community of nurses, volunteers and people affected by breast cancer who work in collaboration to make sure everyone diagnosed with breast cancer gets the support they deserve. This is through free face-to-face groups and continual campaigning for better care.
Hereford MS therapy – Hereford MS is a support centre consisting of volunteers and friends. Their aim is to help MS suffers to help themselves, especially in keeping as safe and mobile as possible within the confines of their condition.
St Richards Hospice – St Richard’s Hospice cares for patients and families in Worcestershire who are living with life-limiting illnesses. Each year they provide free care and support to around 3,300 patients, loved ones and the bereaved – helping them towards the best quality of life possible.
St Michael’s Hospice – Since opening in 1984, St Michael’s Hospice has been providing the highest quality care, free of charge, to the local community. The same community has worked tirelessly to generate the funds needed to make all the care possible.
SANDS – Sands exists to support anyone affected by the death of a baby, to improve the bereavement care received by parents and families, and to influence policy makers and promote research to reduce the number of babies dying.
Emmaus – Emmaus is a homelessness charity offering homes to people for as long as they need it, as well as providing meaningful work in our social enterprises.
Ocean Cleanup – Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organisation, developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.
Charitable activity through The Brain Health Programme
In 2018 we also held three events through The Brain Health programme, a nutrition and lifestyle programme delivered by Cytoplan nutritional therapists, designed to optimise brain health and cognitive function using a multi-modal nutrition and lifestyle approach. These events were held in Dublin, High Wycombe and Edinburgh, and all proceeds from these events were donated to local charities within the area, including:
Lindengate – Lindengate is a mental health charity that offers specialised gardening activities to help those with mental health needs in their continuing recovery. Their services, known as Social & Therapeutic Horticulture (STH), use the healing power of nature and the outdoors to improve mental wellbeing, boost self-esteem & social inclusion and encourage long-term recovery.
Health In Mind – Health in Mind have been promoting positive mental health and wellbeing in Scotland since 1982. They do this by offering a range of mental health and wellbeing services, raising awareness of mental health and wellbeing issues, and innovating, developing and promoting new approaches to mental health improvement.
A Lust for Life – A Lust for Life is an award winning Irish wellbeing movement created to transform how people talk about and treat mental health in Ireland. Their mission is to support, inspire and empower people to take care of their own minds.
You can find out more about The Brain Health Programme via this link.
A big Thank You
Every customer who purchases our products, whether it be once, twice or ten times a year, is helping us to try and help those who are much less fortunate than ourselves. We believe this is a sound business model: one that we are proud of and one that hopefully, in time, will achieve a goal we have set ourselves, to help improve the health of the nation. Our charitable work – both on a small and large scale – is testament to this.
We hope that this information has given you a small insight into the charitable structure of Cytoplan and the significant role it plays in the day to day running of the company. We hope you can continue to support us in the future.
If you have any questions regarding the topics that have been raised, or any other health matters, please do contact me (Amanda) by phone or email at any time.
amanda@cytoplan.co.uk, 01684 310099
Amanda Williams and the Cytoplan Editorial Team
Last updated on 20th November 2020 by cytoffice
I did not realise how much support you give these foundations and initiatives, it is quite inspiring.
Very impressive, thank you for the article as I didn’t realise this was the ethos of Cytoplan.Thank you
I wasn’t aware of this background to your work- thank you. Interesting & uplifting:-)
Indeed it is.
Thank you for letting us know about Cytoplan’s support for these very varied and thought-proving charities. I had no idea that you did this and it is enormously encouraging to know that you care enough to share your profits in this way as well as researching the many areas of nutrition and keeping us up to date with your blog.
What an amazing amount of money has been given to such worthwhile charities – well done.