TEN YEARS of Let Yourself Trust
As fired up as I was when Justine and I dreamed our vision to start our charity ‘Let Yourself Trust’, there was absolutely no way I could have envisaged how much we would all achieve together in these past ten years.
The incredible amount of money donated from the compassion of those who dig deep into the music, as well as their pockets, along with amazing volunteer trips to educate, build and fire our imaginations, goes way beyond anything that I could have hoped for when we set out on this beautiful journey. The huge goodwill and trust shown by our supporters continues to remind me of that greater good that we all seek and believe in. Together with you, and through our wonderful partners, we have been able to bring hope and change to the lives of thousands of people across the globe.
As I take stock of all this I’m both humbled and hungry to see what the next exciting chapters have in store. So here’s to much more my friends, for has there ever been a moment in our lifetime, when true compassion, peace, justice and love were more needed? Onward we go.
In gratitude and solidarity,
Martyn
In the ten years since LYT started in 2014 we have:
Donated just over £672,000 (over $850k USD/over $1 Million CAD)
Supported FIFTY projects - 19 Main partners and 31 Community Development Donations (CDDs)
Led 5 Volunteer Trips
Worked in 21 Countries
Done it all without a single grant or business donation - completely funded by YOU.
We can’t begin to list the thousands of lives and stories that have been affected by your support. Instead, we asked some of our partners for direct updates to share with you all, which you will find below. First, however, we wanted to answer some questions we’re often asked, to give you a sharper insight into LYT as we stand today, and as we move forward into our next 10 years.
Where does your funding come from?
As mentioned above, the over £672,000 donated has come to us without a single grant. YOU are our entire support base - Martyn’s audience. When we started out our big focus was to collect a small army of monthly donors that would give us a sustainable income throughout the year, as every 6 months we try to give away as much as possible and essentially empty out the coffers. It took us a few years, but we managed to grow our army of hope and support into 600+ folks who donate an average of £10/month. Some folks give £5, some give £20, it varies and is completely based on personal choice, but ultimately it averages out to £10/month. We (understandably) lose some folks throughout the year, and years, but we also continue to add new monthly supporters as Martyn reaches new fans while touring.
While the monthly donors are the bulk of our income, we also receive cash donations at shows, online donations via our website, and some folks sign up to do fundraisers for us - races, golf tournaments, etc. All combined, it means we continue to move forward at a sustainable pace, and it means we have funding available to give away to our partners every 6 months.
We are entirely funded by you. It will never cease to amaze us, and we will never, ever take it for granted.
What does the future hold?
Quite honestly - we don’t know. Every month, quarter, year we run our reports and sigh in relief and astonishment that our model continues to hold - that people all over the world continue to support us with whatever they can. We do know, however, that one day this may change and we are currently brainstorming on how to grow our sources of income.
Do we start a USA chapter? A Canadian arm? Do we hire someone who’s sole focus is to bring in grants? This would change our identity quite drastically, and frankly, the grant giving world is shrinking before our eyes. Do we focus on fundraisers, large events that bring in large amounts once or twice a year? These aren’t a guarantee, require a lot of expense investment and a huge amount of time to plan. We have exactly one full time employee who runs our entire organisation and who’s already at maximum bandwidth running the daily operations and researching and planning our next partners every 6 months. Changing gears to fundraisers would mean a part-time hire at least, and is again an investment in income without a guarantee in return.
So we continue to brainstorm. And we continue to hold steady with your support, and continue to hope this can be our way forward for some time while we try to grow in an authentic way to Let Yourself’s identity. We are a very small, grassroots charity that uses our funding to support the work of other very small, grassroots charities all over the world.. We are very proud of our compact size, as it leads to the freedom to provide a very big, immediate impact to our partners. We promote simply, with a clear purpose and an urgent need. We want to hold onto this independence while continuing to provide as much support as possible, to as wide a variety of partners as we can.
We share this with all of you to continue to be as transparent as possible, and to hopefully truly show you the impact your donations have. To be clear, we continue to be on very solid, sustainable ground (thanks to all of you!), we’re merely trying to responsibly plan for the future. We’re also very open to ideas, so do please be in touch if you have any thoughts!
How do you find your partners? How do we apply for funding?
In what is truly a beautiful cycle of being united by art and synergy, we hear about our potential partners through all of you, after you’ve heard Martyn speak on stage. Someone will come up to us at the merch table, or send us an email afterward, and they are on the board of a project, or they are a friend of someone on a board. We also have some wonderful, trusted friends all over the globe that are themselves in circles of folks doing good work around the world, and who keep their ears to the ground for us for potential partners. It’s very much word of mouth, which is essential as connecting to truly grassroots partners is difficult. We work with folks who are too small to have a marketing team - they are single individuals, husband and wife teams, people who have committed their lives to the work and who are living and breathing it every day. They often don’t have time to reach out themselves and so it’s with this beautiful connection to Martyn’s music that we hear about them, through all of you.
When we do start a conversation with a potential partner, we always ask for their budget, their history, their current situation and their current need. Emailing us with links to websites, budgets and photos attached, and a direct letter explaining more about their need is where we start. If it’s the right potential fit, we continue to gather information and then add you to a short list of prospects to be discussed and voted on at our next Board meeting. As we only change partners every 6 months, it’s not always an immediate ability to work with folks, but we continue to stay in touch until the right moment arrives. Sometimes we work with a new partner fairly soon after hearing about them, and sometimes we stay in touch for years before it’s their moment. We try very hard to work with as many folks as possible, as soon as possible.
AN UPDATE FROM OUR PARTNERS
Hopefully you’re still with us through this lengthy update, as we now share some of our partners latest news! We’re keeping the updates brief, but to review each partner individually, please click on their name to read more.
AMAUDO - Nigeria
Thanks to your generous giving, LYT were able to fund Amaudo’s dire need for a new vehicle.
The new vehicle has already had a positive impact on the work. There have been no maintenance costs since its purchase, which has saved considerable funds. Despite the poor roads and rains the vehicle has not got stuck anywhere and it has given staff confidence to travel widely and make visits to rural locations which have not been made for a long time.
Currently the vehicle is used to:
reach service users during home visits
supervise community psychiatric nurses in community clinics
make visits to government officials
visit corporate supporters to appeal for funding
Visit communities to plan awareness raising events and meet community leaders
We are so, so grateful for your amazingly generous donation that has allowed us to purchase the vehicle. It is so essential to managing the numerous mental health services and advocacy work which happens each and every day.
JEEVAN ASHA - India
From 2021 onward marks the time we were in the midst of the pandemic, slowly easing our way into the new normal. The measures taken to contain COVID-19, affected households in many ways, including job loss, loss of remittances, higher prices, rationing of food and other basic goods, and disruptions to health care services and education.
Jeevan Asha’s (JA) work through its twelve projects in the thirteen under-served communities had been affected too. Many of our large-scale activities like awareness sessions, community meetings, medical camps etc. had to be shut down because of the lockdown. We had to think out of the box to cater to our beneficiaries who were in dire straits, more so than before.
And we’ve come out stronger.
Here’s a quick update on what we’ve been up to :
Just this year we’ve been able to
Reach – 3100+ beneficiaries through (camps, awareness sessions etc.)
Impact - 836 individuals (consistent care, love, education, and healthcare.)
These are more than just numbers, these are lives whose destinies have been changed forever.
ZAC’S PLACE - Swansea, UK
The pandemic caused a lot of things to shut down or reduce its services across the board in many communities. At Zac’s Place however it saw our emergency food provision for those living in food poverty to significantly increase, as the need became more apparent.
This increased service has been maintained in the few years since and if anything has actually needed to increase more, due to demand.
We continue to provide essential hot food provision for people who are either homeless or living in circumstances where they have no cooking facilities. We continue to work in partnership with the local council and other key agencies to see a joined up service have maximum impact on the ground.
The grants from LYT have been incredibly helpful and often very timely in us sustaining this grass roots provision.
Do not underestimate the importance of what the support of LYT has meant to small grass roots operations like ours. Thank you to all of those who contribute to this worthwhile initiative of LYT and the community of people around Martyn’s music.
CAMP JOJO - Essex, UK
Camp Jojo has gone from strength to strength with five highly successful camps last Summer with six planned for this year, increasing to eight in 2025. The development of a northern site is now confirmed and, funds permitting, three camps are planned at Appleby in Westmoreland next year.
The biggest endorsement of our efforts must be the number of families who applied to come on camp this year, 284. This proved to be a mammoth task for Louise our new Ops Manager and Christine to whittle this number down to even a manageable number to select from. You can imagine that all these people deserved a place but that just isn’t possible, and so some heart wrenching decisions had to be made to try and select the most deserving. Inevitably this process revealed some truly vulnerable children, many with severely life limiting conditions and ongoing cancer to cope with.
I do feel that we would not be in the position we are now were it not for the for the faith LYT had in us at the beginning together with the vital financial boost that came with it.
AMOS TRUST - Palestine, Gaza, Tanzania, South Africa
Amos Trust is very proud of our partnership with Let Yourself Trust and of the deep friendships that exist. Much of this partnership has focussed on Palestine although the Trust has also supported our On Her Terms - Street Justice work in Tanzania and South Africa.
To focus on Palestine, Let Yourself Trust has supported Amos’ work with NECC in Gaza, specifically their employment training for young people and psychosocial support to children and young people - this includes the children’s mothers. The Trust has also supported our work at the Al Ahli ‘baptist’ hospital and specifically their breast cancer screening work and last December our emergency appeal for Gaza and the West Bank.
On the West Bank Let Yourself Trust have been involved in our home rebuild programme, have been very involved in supporting Alrowwad Youth Arts project in Aida camp, Bethlehem, and with Amos’ Head of Operations have taken supporters and artists to visit and to see the situation on the ground.
In terms of an update, it is hard to imagine the horror and trauma people in Gaza are experiencing. They have been under constant attack now for eight months and are exhausted and traumatised with no end in sight. Nowhere is safe in Gaza and the medical facilities are overwhelmed. The World Health Organisation has described the situation in Gaza as “beyond catastrophic.”
As of 19th June, over 37,396 people have been killed, 15,000 of them are children and over 85,500 have been injured since October 7th. It is estimated that over 10,000 people are missing under the rubble. 2 million people have been displaced, many numerous times. Over 1 million people who were sheltering in Rafah have been forced out and 900,000 of these have been crammed into highly congested areas along the coast in the burning summer heat. They have no facilities as so much of the population is being systematically denied access to food, fuel and medical care. Water levels are critically low, with people having to queue for hours to collect it and being forced to rely on sea water for domestic use. People are using shallow pit latrines, and there is a continuing spread of communicable illnesses, amid sewage overflow, piles of effluent, the proliferation of insects, rodents and snakes, and a near-total lack of hygiene items and sanitation facilities.
In the midst of this the Al Ahli hospital has continued to run despite facing multiple acute challenges. At various points it has been the only operating hospital in Gaza, despite only having 80 beds it has had over 400 inpatients - and converted their chapel, library and reception areas into temporary wards.
It has run well beyond its capacity and has faced continued shortages, whether those be in medical personnel, medicines, dressings and other basic medical supplies, anaesthetics and antibiotics, food for patients and staff or power.
In the West Bank, Alrowwad have maintained their Beautiful Resistance programmes throughout this period and believe that they are more important than ever in responding to the lack of hope felt by so many young people. This includes their Dabke training programmes (3 age groups practise twice a week), their theatre groups who have developed new pieces in response to the war on Gaza, their film and photography projects and their music groups. Their centre and library have also continued to be open and to provide a safe place for children and young people as well as providing a base for additional classes in English, Maths and Arabic.
They have also sought to respond to the wider needs of the camp, through their work with women’s groups and by providing emergency food support. After October 7th Alrowwad used their accommodation block to provide accommodation to Palestinians from Gaza who had been working inside Israel. These people had been picked up in Israel and left at the nearby checkpoint with no possessions, money, or ID. Each Ramadan Alrowwad provides hot Iftar meals to families in the camp who are struggling - this year the demand far exceeded their ability to respond and despite tripling the numbers of meals provided they were not able to meet demand.
Amos has continued to support their Beautiful Resistance work but also supported their work with those displaced from Gaza and after a French funding platform refused to pass on money that had been raised for Alrowwad during Ramadan we stepped in and supported their food programmes.
The above is merely a fraction of the reports we received, and we could go on and on about the projects and lives that have been impacted by your support of Let Yourself Trust over the last 10 years. We have merely been the facilitators, it’s all of YOU that have brokered grace, kindness, and desperately needed life saving supplies into the lives of so many across the globe.
Be so very proud of your generosity, your commitment to activism, and your beautiful hearts. Thank you for being a part of our community these last 10 years.
Here’s to the next ten!
