Hello everyone,
With the Governments in Scotland and Wales in recess and the team having fewer meetings at Westminster than usual, it has been an ‘ordinary’ week for the campaigning team.
So, what does that look like?
Yesterday we were at a meeting with a prospective supporter who wanted to learn more about becoming a Member Charity, and so we took that opportunity to explain about our campaigning priorities and the impact we have had and how the past six months have seen significant developments in our space. This includes the National Cancer Plan, the NIHR Consortium and, of course, the breakthrough with vorasidenib. Hopefully, alongside information from our colleagues about our fundraising events and all of the work being undertaken at our Research Centres, this will make an irresistible case for joining our community.
In the run up to the London Marathon, we have been talking to the media about our wonderful runners who are taking this on to support Brain Tumour Research. Their fundraising will go not only towards dedicated research into brain tumours, but will also support our campaigning endeavours across the UK. These endeavours helped to get the £40 million made available for allocation to research in 2018 and then, through further vigorous campaigning, hopefully now we are finally well on the way to full deployment of that money.
We have been working with our fundraising team to make sure that the journey of a Brain Tumour Research supporter includes a campaigning element, because our fundraisers are desperate for change and we can and must empower and encourage everyone who supports us to get involved.
We are all fundraisers and we are all campaigners too!
This week has seen a lot of preparatory work in setting up of a new Patient Advocacy Group (more about this in the coming weeks) and we have written to Health Minister Sharon Hodgson about tissue storage and whole genome sequencing.
We were also a core part of the first meeting of a group set up to push for progress on the implementation of the Rare Cancers Bill with other meetings this week including the Charities Medicines Access Coalition and the Annual Conference of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).
We prepared the papers for a meeting of our Policy subcommittee which is scheduled in 10 days’ time. This is when our trustees review all that we have done in the last few months and what we have planned, to make sure we are aligned with the charity’s vision and mission, while staying on track with campaigning targets.
So, you can see there is quite a lot that goes into an ‘ordinary’ week for the campaigning team.
Many, many thanks as always to those of you who got in touch with your MPs last week requesting that they join the meeting of our APPG on 2nd June. It is hugely appreciated.
That’s it for this week.
We will be back next Friday with another update.
Wishing you all a peaceful time until then.
Karen, Hugh, Katherine and Jana.
