The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square has a long history of welcoming and supporting homeless people. A BBC Radio Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields to help fund this work is almost as old as the BBC itself – it first appeared in the Radio Times in 1927, so the collaboration is now in its 91st year.

One of the great things about my job as Producer of Radio 4 Appeals is being the Producer of the Radio side of the Christmas Appeal. I work closely with St Martin’s to share with listeners the personal stories behind the work they do.

At the Connection, the day and night centre in the building right next to the Church of St Martins, the aim is get to the root of what made people homeless in the first place. It may start with warm food and a machine to wash your clothes in the basement, and go through one-to-one assessments, housing advice, addiction support, creative and therapeutic groups, skills training, volunteering opportunities, and help with job applications and interviews.

Often the first contact a homeless person has with the Connection is with an outreach worker like Barry, who explains here what a typical night shift is like, helping some of London’s most vulnerable rough sleepers. 

Kate Howells is Producer, Radio 4 Appeals

Barry's experience as a Street Outreach Worker

I am a Street Outreach worker. I walk along the streets of Westminster, stopping to talk to homeless people who are sleeping in doorways and on the pavements, and in the alleyways behind buildings. There is no such thing as an average day, or “shift” and we work early in the morning and also very late at night.

There is a very different rhythm and lilt of life late at night in the capital. Once the shops are closed and the last of the revellers are on their way home, the streets, theatres, Cathedrals, and Palaces seem far more bleak and isolated places to be.

To give an example, these are just three of the people who we encountered on a recent night shift through the city:

Joe is 44. He’s sleeping in a doorway under a plastic sheet on a busy shopping street in the West End. He feels safer out in public view, although he is unlikely to sleep much. He tells us that he has experienced mental health problems for most of his adult life, and this led to a marital breakdown and him rough sleeping. Joe is reluctant to access a daycentre or a hostel bed, owing to the auditory hallucinations he is having, which he describes as “voices”, telling him the world is ending imminently.

Ellie is 25 and recently arrived from Liverpool. We are worried about her as she is regularly seen in a sleeping bag out in the rain, with nothing more than cardboard boxes between her and the pavement. She doesn’t want to disclose much information, but we will keep returning to talk to her, and to establish what has happened to encourage her into some temporary housing, however long this takes.  

Piotr is 37 and he was initially resistant to engaging with any Street Outreach services, and seemed to be intoxicated on several occasions. The people we encounter can often be distrustful of services, as they have felt let down in the past. Our role is to get to know people, what has brought them here, and initiate a working relationship, so that they start to understand that we’re here to help.  In Piotr’s case, he has now opened up to us, after many weeks of stopping in the street to talk to him. He told us that he came to the UK to work last year, only to find himself working 12 hours a day for less than £2 an hour on a building site. He was threatened and locked into a cellar room with minimal food every night until he escaped, and was found by us hiding in central London.  He is now being supported to return home to his family.

For these people, and so many others, we work towards a route off the streets through The Connection’s services. We’ll find emergency accommodation and longer term housing, as well as access to healthcare, support for enduring mental health problems, and the treatment and counselling to recover from dependencies on alcohol or drugs.

We often hear that homelessness is self-inflicted. That is a matter of opinion, but from my own experience of over 20 years, the reality is far more complex. There are vulnerable people from across the world, for whom one thing, or a series of things have gone catastrophically wrong, leading to them sleeping rough on the streets of London. I am motivated to go to work every day because if we can help even a single person off the streets, then it is a job worth doing.

The Radio 4 Christmas Appeal funds 25% of the vital work done by The Connection at St Martin's in central London, and 100% of the emergency grants given by the Vicars Relief fund to help people around the country get a safe place to live.

• Find out more about the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal and to make a donation
• Visit the Connection website

The Disasters Emergency Committee has been partnering with the BBC to launch appeals for the past 50 years. Many people may remember the appeal after the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 or the most recent appeal for the people of Nepal after the earthquake in 2015.

There are 13 DEC member agencies: Action Aid, Age International, British Red Cross, Cafod, Care, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief, Oxfam, Plan International, Save the Children, Tearfund, World Vision.

The DEC request an appeal from the UK’s broadcasters when faced with an emergency, to which they are confident their members can respond. Before agreeing to broadcast appeals we take into consideration various factors – scale and urgency of disaster; ability to get humanitarian assistance to those in need; and public awareness – in this instance we believe they have been met.

Yemen is already one of the poorest countries in the world and a number of the DEC charities have been working there for many years. Twenty months of war have brought Yemen to breaking point. Millions of people do not know where their next meal will come from. A worsening cholera outbreak in some regions must be contained before it spreads. Hospitals have been destroyed and there is a chronic shortage of medical essentials. The DEC member agencies who work on both sides of the conflict are warning that if we don’t act now, this crisis will reach “catastrophic proportions” and many more children may die of malnutrition.

DEC Chief Executive, Saleh Saeed said:

“Now is the time to save lives in Yemen before it is too late. Children face the greatest risk of starvation – almost half a million infants and young children need immediate treatment for malnutrition. DEC agencies are already providing treatment for malnutrition, running mobile health teams, distributing emergency food and cash but they need more funds to reach more people.”

On launch day, the BBC makes a television and radio appeal with supporting social media content that goes out on all its platforms from BBC Alba our Gaelic service to BBC Three online to BBC One. The appeal will run on all our network, regional and local radio stations, websites and social media platforms.

Audiences to these emergency appeals have been extremely generous, the BBC and the DEC are hopeful that once again the British public will support this emergency appeal.

Sally Flatman is BBC Charity Appeals Advisor.

• To find out more about how to donate to the Yemen Crisis Appeal, visit the DEC website.

As Star Wars continues to break daily records in the cinemas, it’s hard to move for talk of ‘The Force’. An indefinable and benign power, which when used in the right way can literally rid the world of evil. While not wanting to over-inflate Radio 1 and 1Xtra’s role on the planet - and certainly not to draw any direct parallels between Luke Skywalker and our presenters - we never take for granted the influence we have over our audience, and the trust they have in us to guide them in many areas of life.

That trust has allowed us to bring our precious audience with us on our #1MillionHours year-long volunteering campaign which launched in December. We want to encourage our audience to give 1 million hours of their time to good causes over the next 12 months - and there’s nothing like a big target to motivate: In the first month of the campaign, over 100,000 hours of volunteering were pledged to good causes - an amazing start, and something we hope helps to inspire others.

#1MillionHours is Radio 1 and 1Xtra’s most ambitious social action project to date. Time is a precious thing, but in a world where money rules, it feels right to subvert the usual ask, and motivate real action instead. In an unprecedented move we are side by side with four of the UK’s most experienced charities; Age UK, Barnardo’s, Cancer Research UK and Oxfam. Most people will be affected or moved by the work one of those organisations does at some point in their life, so being able to bring stories and causes to life via those partnerships has felt fresh.

Listeners can pledge 8, 16 or 24 hours for various volunteering opportunities that they can cash in over the next year. From working in shops, to helping in children's play centres and daycare centres for older people, cheerleading at fun runs and helping in festivals, the opportunities are as much about them gaining skills, confidence and material for CVs themselves. A survey Radio 1 and 1Xtra conducted last year taught us that after the cause itself, personal benefit was the next biggest reason for young people wanting to volunteer.

#1MillionHours is also about wrapping our arms around the thriving volunteering sector as a whole. Aside from our featured charities, there are so many inventive and hard working organisations, both national and local, already relying on the kindness of strangers and motivating young people to take part in something ‘more’. From the familiar Guides and Scouts to newer organisations like IWill.org.uk, we plan to shine a spotlight on good works in progress. What Radio 1 and 1Xtra can bring to their expertise, is scale, and our ability to pull people together. We see ourselves as the link between our loyal army of young listeners and those organisations, so we’re encouraging our audience to pledge time to any cause close to their heart too via social media, using the #1MillionHours hashtag.

The first drive in December was about getting the #1MillionHours message out there, establishing intentions with our audience, and connecting fully with the sector. We’re excited to be gathering many faces from the volunteering world in January to plot the detail of the rest of the challenge ahead. Our use of ‘The Force’ there will be about encouraging collaboration and hopefully matchmaking between likeminded organisations. We're in a unique position to be able to do that, and for that we have endless energy to reach targets like #1MillionHours.

Our audiences trust us to get them the best new music, the most accurate and relevant news, the latest in the world of entertainment, the most up-to-date everything. Having earned the trust of a loyal group of young people, comes the potential to inspire and make waves in their lives beyond pop culture. So Radio 1 and 1Xtra have come to consider ourselves a force for good in the UK for young people - ensuring we curate the best advice for getting ahead in their careers, dealing with the trials and tribulations of first times, and how to stay safe and happy in a complicated world.

But our definition of this ‘Force’ is more than our own weight and influence; we have a strong belief that our young listeners themselves are a positive power, ready and able to change their world for the better. At events we do with and for young people up and down the country, we are always struck (but never surprised) at how motivated and curious our audience is to change things. As grand as this sounds, the swell of good intentions is often flooring.

From Radio 1’s Academy, 1Xtra’s outreach sessions, Internet Safety focuses and our weekly Surgery programme, to the newly launched #1MillionHours campaign, Radio 1 and 1Xtra’s commitment to utilising our platforms, talent and staff for something ‘more’ is second-to-none. Beyond our public service duties, it’s just what we do on the 8th floor of New Broadcasting House and is one of the many reasons that Radio 1 is distinctive.

Rebecca Frank is Editor, Radio 1 and 1Xtra.

• Visit the #1MillionHours website for more information and advice on how to pledge.

There was that building still intact, in a farming district on the outskirts of Kathmandu, pictured behind a large group of smiling faces: Bidhya’s extended family. We’d sat inside on the earth floor with Bidhya and family and shared a generous and delicious Dal Baht. That room, that home, is no more. How quickly things change, how fragile our assumptions and supposed securities can be.

Access to information can help or it can hinder: it depends on its timeliness, its reliability and is always subject to change. Our work in Nepal is using media to help people deal with the changing challenges of chaotic and frightening times. Reports are saying that Tuesday’s huge aftershock has taken efforts back to day one: it’s about survival and rescue again. And my colleagues are once again providing updates through their network of radio stations. It’s utterly vital to cut through the confusion with clear information.

Elsewhere in the world, but still with a focus on Nepal, the media is playing its part for good and ill. A bizarre story has emerged of Facebook users, far from Nepal, clogging a new service designed to track and check on the safety of those in Nepal. People who are thousands of miles from Nepal have thought it funny to confirm they are ‘safe’ too. They are being ‘de-friended’ at pace but it is curious and striking how fragile that concept of ‘safety’ really is.

When I was in Nepal and we visited Bidhya’s home, it was a very happy and celebratory day as we talked with her family about her rapid rise as the new presenter of Sajha Sawal. Bidhya’s family home was simply too small to fit all her neighbours and friends in, so after dinner we crowded into a neighbour’s house to watch that evening’s show.

When the programme finished her parents spoke with pride of how Bidhya now provided not only a role model for the country’s girls, but that as a poor farmer’s daughter, “It was a lesson for all farmers to aim high”. Bidhya’s father had beamed this last sentence, his eyes shining with tears.

Now, with the monsoon approaching and with so many farmers unable to cultivate their land (rice seed stocks destroyed, the working day thrown into the uneasy rhythm of aftershocks and coping with damage and loss) there are fears about food security and for livelihoods. Even while people are trying to cope with the immediate crisis of the earthquakes and aftershocks there are other, longer-term concerns. Nepal, after so much gained and with so much potential, is a country again struggling with the most basic and urgent priorities of life: shelter, water, food, health, sanitation.

We can all help: from near and far. In the days following the first earthquake hundreds of people started flying into the country: journalists to take the story to the world, aid and health workers to provide support, and many expatriate Nepalese, returning to help the country rebuild.

I was touched to hear that my former colleague Dipika Shrestha has flown back from a ‘new life’ in the US to resume our work in Nepal. Nepal, in this time of great insecurity, needs our support more than ever. I don’t yet know of the welfare of all of those I interviewed, and I’m especially concerned about those I met in vulnerable Himalayan towns close to Tuesday’s earthquake epicentre. Their stories, back then, were of poor and marginalised people standing up for their rights through our radio shows. How those rights and priorities have had to change – buildings, lives, hopes, assumptions – need to be rebuilt.

In these uncertain times we are working with the BBC World Service’s BBC Nepali and a network of radio partners in Nepal to broadcast our radio programmes – helping people keep safe, find missing loved ones, and access food, water and shelter. In the wake of the second major earthquake, our work helping people access information is more important than ever, so if you can support us please do.

Kirsty Cockburn is Director of Communications and Fundraising for BBC Media Action.

• BBC Media Action is an independent charity and not funded by the licence fee.
• If you’d like to support BBC Media Action’s work in Nepal, you can donate online or text “INFO15 £5” to 70070 to donate £5.

The BBC has a long and proud history of supporting charities. In fact, the first BBC appeal was for the Winter Distress League, a charity representing homeless veterans of the First World War. Back in 1923 this appeal - the idea of Lord Reith the first Director General - raised £26 6s 6d.

In 2014 people have continued to dig deep to support our charities – as well as donating generously to two Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals for Gaza and Ebola, which the BBC has aired with other broadcasters. It’s heartening that while people have given more than ever on the night of broadcast for BBC appeals, they’ve also generously supported these relief efforts.

In March, Sport Relief came from the Olympic Park in East London and raised a record £71.8m for causes around the world and here in the UK. This money is helping children like Raymond from Ghana - who has to crawl through dark tunnels while working in a gold mine – to go to school. During the festive season I’m pleased to know that BBC audiences are helping children like Raymond get an education - something that we so often take for granted in the UK.

In November, BBC Children in Need also raised a record breaking on the night total of £32.6m. Lots of the money raised for our major appeals comes from the activity around them - such as the rickshaw challenge on the One Show - and all the sponsored activity you take part in. We never cease to be amazed by the creativity, love and hard work that goes in to this at schools, colleges and workplaces across the UK.

And let’s not forget our local radio appeals which many of you donate to as well, raising a total of £660,000. They’ve made a real difference to communities up and down the country.

In October BBC Radio Suffolk closed the books on their year-long appeal with Suffolk Family Carers with listeners helping to buy a mobile family carers vehicle and pay the running costs for two years.

BBC Radio York raised a staggering £240,000 to buy a ‘Good Night’s Sleep’ for North Yorkshire families caring for children with life limiting illnesses – doubling the original target.

BBC Radio Cumbria is in a partnership with Jigsaw, Cumbria’s Children’s Hospice until the end of January, raising £110,000 two months ahead of schedule. This extra money will go to funding respite care visits.

BBC Radio Cambridge has helped towards the redevelopment of Thorpe Hall, a Sue Ryder Hospice. Meanwhile in December, BBC Radio Cornwall distributed over £50,000 to 20 local charities in small grants from its charity fund.

But it doesn’t end there. We’ve been able to help another 32 people with a share of £320,000 from our fund to support, promote and encourage the performing arts across the UK. From choreographers, producers and writers, to a circus performer, a poet and a lighting designer, the recipients of this year’s grants from the BBC Performing Arts Fund are as diverse as the places they come from with two-thirds working outside London. The money is raised from voting lines on BBC One entertainment programme like The Voice.

Then there’s the monthly BBC One Lifeline Appeal and the weekly Radio 4 Appeal which have supported the work of 60 smaller charities and has enlisted the support of presenters including Jack Osbourne and Michael Palin. And just this month the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields, now in its 88th year, raised £1m in its first week.

The money raised for that first BBC charity appeal in 1923 was about £1,025 in today’s money. The £107 million we have received so far this year shows we’ve come a long way since then - and it’s all thanks to the enduring support of you, the BBC audience.

Sally Flatman is BBC Charity Appeals Adviser.

• For more information on how to apply for an appeal visit the BBC Charity Appeals website.
• Keep up to date with BBC Charity Appeals on Facebook.

Ahead of the first of this year’s application deadlines, Project Manager, Liz Woodham shares details of the current BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility scheme, Community Doorway.

Every BBC member of staff has their values printed on the back of their security pass and one of those values clearly states: “Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.” That’s easy to understand when it comes to the BBC making programmes: we hear from our audiences when they want to contact us about a programme they’ve watched or listened to. But there are other ways we can make face-to-face contact with our audiences. And that’s where the BBC’s Outreach & Corporate Responsibility department comes in.

We mount a year-long programme of face-to-face activities, community support and volunteering projects. Through our work we try to ensure that the BBC has a positive impact in communities where we are a large employer - primarily Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Greater Manchester, and Salford where we are currently based.

We have a strong track record of working with a diverse range of national charities over the years, including the creation of video content for the Samaritans, audio stories for Action for Children, a new website for National Prison Radio, storytelling workshops for Motor Neurone Disease Association volunteers and mentors helping the long term unemployed back to work alongside the charity Tomorrow's People.

There are staff all over the BBC who get involved in volunteering with us, some offer regular time to read with local school children, some give their skills and expertise to a one-off production or project, and others use the charity partnerships BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility have to give their time as a School Governor or trustee of a charity.

Our latest project, launched in December 2013, is the BBC Community Doorway programme. This is a new scheme for charities and community organisations, who can apply to access the skills and expertise of our BBC staff volunteers to help deliver a one-off project. For example you may need support to create a short film to showcase the work of your charity, help to set up a website, or even to produce a community event of your own.

We are currently welcoming applications from charities and community groups in Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster, Salford and Greater Manchester that work with 16-24 year olds and/or groups that are considered to be disadvantaged or socially excluded. There are four application deadlines per year, the first is on 31st January 2014, but the application process is rolling so there are no cut off dates. All application information is on our website, including the application form itself.

We know from previous BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility projects that our BBC volunteers gain a lot working with communities in their local areas, and the groups they work with get to understand what else the BBC can offer them beyond broadcasting. For many young people, the experiences can be transformational and often spark aspirations of working in media.

Liz Woodham is Project Manager, BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility.

• You can download the BBC Community Doorway application form here.
• Read Diane Reid's blog about the BBC Corporate Responsibility Review 2013.

It can sometimes feel like an anxious time when annual reports are looming - the trenches of stats and information, probing questions from verifiers! Essentially though, I think external reporting is a thoroughly useful process - both for ensuring we keep our house in order and also for being more open with our audiences. Reporting creates a useful (and public) milestone and a chance to reflect on the year's achievements - which are by no means small.

For me, one of the highlights of the year has been seeing the strength of the BBC's charity broadcast appeals - in spite of the current economic climate. Audiences have been incredibly generous. Both Children in Need and Sport Relief exceeded their previous fundraising totals, raising £39m and over £40m respectively - a fantastic achievement that will benefit people across the UK and abroad.

I've also been incredibly proud of the support BBC staff have given to outreach initiatives that
extend beyond their day jobs. School Report is just one example. It's a project that engages 11-14 year olds with BBC News - and one of the ways it achieves that is by drawing on the expertise of BBC journalists.

Staff provide mentoring support and help guide teachers, often including a visit to their matched school. In March, over 25,000 students from over 700 UK-wide schools took part in annual News Day by publishing their own reports, on news that matters to them. It's a fantastic moment in the BBC calendar and creates a truly unique opportunity for our young audiences to have their voices heard across BBC News.

Several of my team have been School Report mentors and they've got a great deal out of it. It's amazing how talking to young people about what you do can reconfirm the reasons you do it - not to mention developing communication skills - it's no small feat to hold the attention of a room full of 13 year olds!

Staff also get involved by volunteering with charity partners through the BBC Connect & Create scheme. Last year, an impressive 694 colleagues took part and I also continued providing mentoring support for the charity Tomorrow's People. Ten new national charity partners have now been selected and real effort has gone into ensuring these represent the diversity of our audiences - so staff can develop their understanding at the same time as developing specific skills. I look forward to seeing how these relationships grow over the year ahead.

Reporting on the BBC's environmental performance was another key focus for this year's Corporate Responsibility Report. We have continued to make progress towards reaching the targets set in the 2008 Environmental Action Plan and we're delighted to be on-track with this challenging task.

One of the most significant developments is that the team have been working hard to extend our environmental initiatives - to include how we make our programmes, as well as the way we run our business. As a result, later this year we'll launch "Albert" - a carbon calculator to help production teams assess and measure carbon emissions. I'm told the name has no particular significance - and can confirm that it's not the name of the project lead either (he's called Richard in case you wondered).

BBC Environment Action Plan targets for year end 2012/13:

While the year ahead will present challenges, we remain committed to corporate responsibility and are delighted to have retained Platinum status in Business in the Community's Corporate Responsibility Index - a benchmark for evaluating our impacts in society and on the environment.

I look forward to the year ahead and in particular we plan to focus on the community impacts of opening a new BBC site in Salford in 2010. We're already developing relationships with people on the ground and I'm optimistic that we can make contact with significant sections of the community in advance of the building even opening. Already we have met over 3000 local young people, through projects including media training and backstage tours for schools.

Alec McGivan is the Head of BBC Outreach

• Read the full Corporate Responsibility Report

• Listen to highlights of the School Report radio broadcasts and find out what happened in schools around the UK and overseas, as students turned their classrooms into newsrooms
  
• Find out what BBC School Report is all about from students at schools who have been preparing for a big News Day.
  

It's remarkable to think that the BBC launched its first broadcast appeal for children in 1927 through a five-minute radio programme on Christmas Day. It raised £1,143 18s 3d and the proceeds were shared with four prominent children's charities. In 1980 the appeal was broadcast on BBC One in a new telethon format, hosted by Sir Terry with Sue Lawley and Esther Rantzen. We have come a long way in 30 years and raised a lot of cash.

The show has evolved to become one of the highlights of BBC One's entertainment calendar and last year saw audience figures peak at 12.5 million, with the great and the good of the worlds of showbiz and entertainment appearing to help raise the roof for Pudsey. So a big thanks to everyone who has helped in any way to raise money for the charity - we really do appreciate it, as do the children's charities who benefit from the grants we give.

Pudsey has also changed through the years from the very sad-looking brown bear with the red and white spotty eyepatch who graced our screens back in 1980, to the fresh-faced bear of today that we know and love, his last makeover happening in 2007. The first teddy bear Pudsey still exists in the BBC archives, having been usurped by the sunny yellow bear who graces T-shirts and much more up and down the country.

I think the great thing about BBC Children in Need is that it is the people's charity. It is the fundraisers and supporters who take the initiative and create events across the UK in order to help us raise funds for disadvantaged children. We hear some great stories of what the nation is up to - the imagination of the UK knows no bounds! From a marathon space-hopper race and walking from Spain to Cornwall, to a spotty hug-a-thon and a sponsored ghost hunt, it can be quite overwhelming when you hear the lengths people go to for us.

It's important for us to empower our fundraisers and make sure they enjoy raising money for Children in Need. In some ways it's their charity, not ours - we are just looking after it, making sure it's still a great entertainment-based charity for the next generation to enjoy. Lots of our fundraisers are kids, growing up with the simple message about children in the UK helping other children. It's quite humbling really.

You can see some of the children the charity has helped thanks to the generosity of the great British public on our website. We work hard with our grantees to locate and showcase a range of the great stories behind the projects we fund on the telethon. This is really important as it shows how the money that people work incredibly hard to raise and donate is helping to make a real difference to young lives, while also encouraging further engagement with us.

This week also marks the second of our four annual grant rounds. It means that to date we have given out nearly half of our total pot to help disadvantaged children all across the UK.

Last week I went to a project called Sense Scotland based in Glasgow. They provide services to help children who have a range of profound sensory disabilities. Sense Scotland received a BBC Children in Need grant of £333,000 a few years ago to build a children's wing, and since then they have been able to secure millions of additional funding to extend their facilities in order to help more people.

It is really rewarding to be able to see that the money works hard for years after it is first awarded and to speak to the people our funding is helping.

We are also pleased to have been highlighted as a focus in the Strategy Review where we were identified as one of the events that bring communities and the nation together. BBC Children in Need is very much a national occasion with real local relevance and can create real community cohesion across the UK.

Gilda Witte is Director of Marketing and Fundraising, BBC Children in Need

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On January 15th the BBC broadcast over 70 appeals for Haiti on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). Since then, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have raised money, and across the UK BBC staff are no exception, raising money through collections, cake sales and local events.

The total raised by the DEC now stands at over £70m. This is far more than most emergency appeals. Typically, an emergency appeal will raise £10-20m; the most recent exception being the 2005 East Asia Earthquake Appeal, which received around £60m in donations. And, of course, the 2005 Tsunami Appeal raised an extraordinary £300m. Lessons learnt from post-Tsunami disaster relief are being applied to the way agencies are now working in Haiti. Their priorities are moving from immediate aid to reconstruction and recovery: money donated to the DEC Haiti Appeal will be spent over three years, a longer period than usual.

But it's not just the DEC appeal which is current. Sport Relief is in the run-up to an appeal on 19th March. And Blue Peter is looking for a charity partner for its 2011/12 appeal.

The BBC's newest appeal, the BBC Wildlife Fund, is facing some interesting challenges. The programme supporting the appeal will go out on BBC Two on Sunday June 20th. This is a very different slot from BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief - typically a Friday night on BBC One, and a great deal of work is going into how to make the programme 'appeal' to a BBC Two audience. There's also the small matter of a World Cup match between Brazil and Ivory Coast which takes place at the same time, potentially splitting a family audience.

With four months to go, the production team is starting to shoot the films which will tell audiences how the £1.8m raised from the 2006 BBC Wildlife Fund Appeal was spent. Charity staff are putting together off-air events and promotions. The BBC's interactive technical team (ITACU) is looking at how the telephony and donation systems will work. There's new branding; fundraising packs are being assembled. The BBC Wildlife Fund will benefit from the experience of the more established appeals, but crucially, in the run up to the appeal, it will need to find its own distinctive ways to move and involve the audience.

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The shocking images that we continue to see from Haiti are a stark reminder of just how quickly tragedy can strike, and in equal measure how compassionate we can be as a nation in response to it.

Today sees the official launch of Sport Relief 2010, the fund raising collaboration between the BBC and Comic Relief. On the weekend of the 19 - 21 March, Dragons' Den, Top Gear, Strictly on Tour, BBC Sport's stars and hundreds of thousands of members of the public will 'rise to the challenge' for a weekend of fund-raising to help some of the neediest people, many of them in the UK and some, like those in Haiti, on the other side of the world.

Recently I was lucky enough to join colleagues from both the BBC and Comic relief, as well as Strictly and former England rugby star Austin Healey and Something for The Weekend presenter Tim Lovejoy on a visit to one of these places: Zambia.

Although the name conjures up images of the epic Victoria Falls, romantic steam engines traversing the Benguela Railway and colourful postage stamps, since gaining independence in 1964, Zambia has witnessed the inevitable boom and bust of tying your prospects to just one crop - copper - and it is now struggling to feed its people.

Zambia is one of more than 40 African countries where Comic Relief cash is at work and making some progress battling the worst of the continent's problems - shortage of food and water, poor infrastructure, corruption and chronic health issues including the devastation of HIV/ Aids.

The huge challenge it faces is reflected in some devastating statistics - 15 percent of the population is suffering from Aids/ HIV, 64 percent of people live on less than one dollar a day and life-expectancy has fallen to just 42 years.

But in a land where you could excuse people for feeling downtrodden the support from Comic Relief is bolstering the spirit and energy of small neighbourhood, self-help schemes that use local expertise to provide management, support and training to help young and old get on their feet and through the day.

Two of these schemes - the Bwaafana Home Based care organisation which received nearly £300,000 from Comic Relief and the Lusaka-based Women For Change, with a grant of £637,000 - epitomise this resilience. Inspirational leaders Harriet and Bridget manage teams which make a difference on a daily basis by building networks of helpers, nurses, teachers and farmers that tackle the challenges head on where people live - and die.

Even our short time in Zambia made us appreciate how tough these projects have to work to stay afloat amid the challenges and prejudice of what one local school headmaster told us was the traditional mantra of "Educate The Boy and Marry The Girl".

So many of the major inequalities in Zambia stem from a lack of knowledge about health, gender and education, so it was wonderful to visit Mabele School and see boys and girls in class together, getting a basic education in their tiny, hot classrooms. Although a beneficiary of Comic Relief funding, the headmaster has 250 children in six classes, all orphans, and is the sole teacher. Some children walk two hours each way to school without any breakfast in their stomachs - so you understand the scale of the problems he still faces.

But the joy when Tim and Austin handed over a proper football for them to play with on the school's sandy and bumpy pitch showed the huge difference small gestures can make. The kids had real dreams and ambitions - to be teachers, a doctor, a pilot and a lawyer and it filled you with hope that these self-help projects will catch on and take off - an epidemic of goodness in a land where other epidemics have brought only misery and a rising death toll.

We can do so much to help combat such misery and suffering at home and abroad. Since Comic Relief began in 1988 it has raised more than £500m through its Red Nose campaigning on BBC Television. And now Sport Relief, a relative newcomer only born in 2002, is building yet more momentum, fusing the power of entertainment, sport and personal challenge to make a difference too.

My abiding memory of that trip is of an abjectly poor family farm where a mother of seven with her goats and gaggle of hungry children lived, emaciated and exhausted. I remember how her scrawny baby boy reached into her blouse and pulled out a tiny empty breast. Nothing to eat, no meal in sight, not even there. We gave them bananas and the few bottles of water we had with us and as we left the baby boy was sucking hard on some fruit: perhaps enough goodness and nourishment to get through another week. For this family as well as for those in Haiti and across the globe, Sport Relief 2010 just can't come soon enough...

Get involved in Sport Relief or donate at www.sportrelief.com

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Image © REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

I'm writing this from one of the editing suites at Television Centre. The Producer and Editor are choosing shots to go in today's DEC Appeal for the Haiti Earthquake. Anyone watching the Appeal can't fail to be aware of appalling situation, but putting the pictures together really brings things home.

During the day the BBC will broadcast over 70 appeals for the disaster, across radio and television and also online. The first appeal was at 8 o'clock this morning on Radio 3 - there will also be appeals on channels as varied as BBC One, BBC Parliament, the HD Channel, BBC Alba and all the local radio stations.

Because of the scale of the Appeal, over a hundred BBC staff will also be involved, often doing quite small things, but all contributing to the overall impact of the Appeal. There are the radio and television producers, schedulers, web designers, presenters. Yesterday a lawyer volunteered, not to do legal work, but to sort out stills for web pages. Everyone says 'yes' when they are asked.

Back to the editing: The BBC has Editorial Policy and Guidelines which apply to all our output, we also have to comply with our Charter obligations.

For appeals, the guidelines most relevant are usually taste and decency and impartiality. For taste and decency, there's a fine line to be drawn between giving the audience information about the appalling plight of people affected by a disaster and respecting the dignity of those who are suffering.

There's also the issue of how graphic an image of suffering we can show, especially before the watershed. At the moment we're looking at a picture of a man lying on the ground. His hips, arms and legs are clearly broken and there's plenty of blood. The picture could go out in the BBC News at Ten, but probably not in the BBC News at Six, and not in our Appeal, as several of the transmissions are also before the watershed. Impartiality is not an issue for this appeal.

There are also criteria specifically for emergency appeals, which are agreed between the broadcasters and the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). These are:

1) The disaster must be on such a scale and of such urgency as to call for swift international humanitarian assistance.
2) The DEC agencies, or some of them, must be in a position to provide effective and swift humanitarian assistance at a scale to justify a national Appeal.
3) There must be reasonable grounds for concluding that a public appeal would be successful, either because of evidence of existing public sympathy for the humanitarian situation or because there is a compelling case indicating the likelihood of significant public support should an appeal be launched.

The first criterion is primarily about need. For this appeal, the need is evidenced on our screens and by governments and the humanitarian agencies. A second consideration is how much money is needed, i.e. are other organisations funding aid effort? In the case of Haiti, a huge amount of money is promised. However, the need is so great it cannot even be measured at this stage.

On a personal level, my own donation feels like a drop in the ocean. But it means I'm part of trying to make things better for people in Haiti. I would only hope that people watching the appeal feel the same way.

The second criterion is about the ability of the agencies to deliver aid on the ground. Things that get in the way of this can be physical access: this is the case in Haiti. For some emergencies, there may be government opposition to foreign aid, or a weak infrastructure. In Haiti, aid agencies have been working in the country for many years - they know the area and the people which will make a very difficult task easier.

The third criterion is about public sympathy. If we ask our audience, will they want to donate?

We're asking.

"Pudsey's bigger every year, is that right?" I'm travelling home on the Manchester train the morning after a long fundraising night. Keiron, 10, sits opposite me and offers his views on Children in Need and the latest fundraising telethon. He hadn't been allowed to stay up late to watch the show but he knew all about the money raised and which celebrities had appeared and he definitely wanted to buy the Peter Kay official Children in Need DVD. He's one of thousands of people across the country who this weekend raised money for Children in Need.

In fact, the total money raised for the studio night wasn't bigger than the previous year's. Just after 2 o'clock on Friday morning, it was confirmed that a fantastic £20,309,747 had been raised. The total was slightly down on last year, but very impressive in the current climate. The audience had been the highest since 2003.

There's an assumption that every year the BBC's charity appeals will make more and more money. But the reality is that each year Children in Need starts with nothing and it takes hard work and innovation from both the charity and the BBC to raise the money. In the run-up to the broadcast appeal this year there'd been intense speculation inside and outside the BBC, and especially amongst other charities, about how the night would go. At a time of deep recession, would the public still dig deep into their pockets?

In all the speculation about the amount raised, it's easy to forget that raising money is only part of the picture - making people aware of the problems and issues facing children across the UK and actually spending the money to change their lives for the better is the other crucial part.

Charities have been affected in different ways by the recession. For some, the need for their services has never been greater. Others, those with a large proportion of statutory funding, may be less affected. Charities which derive much of their income from interest on investments feel the impact of the recession keenly. But charities like Children in Need and Comic Relief, which get nearly all their money from public donations, want to know if, when times are hard, people will still donate.

One of the reasons people donate to BBC appeals is that audiences trust the BBC to check out the charities it broadcasts appeals for. The charities we support should be well run, sustainable, have real impact and the money raised must go where the BBC said it would. My role as the BBC's Charity Appeals Advisor is to make sure this happens.

The BBC can't make people donate to charity, nor should it, but it does provide opportunities to donate. One of the recent new opportunities is texting. Earlier this year there was a breakthrough when text service providers agreed to set up special charity numbers - the 7 codes and tariffs. This breakthrough meant that a healthy £1.5m plus Gift Aid was raised during Thursday night's Albert Hall rock concert.

So now all of us - programme-makers, fundraisers, donors great and small, and children's projects across the UK - wait for Children in Need's grand total. We won't know this until March. Can the BBC and its audience - an audience which each year raises up to £100m for charity - beat last year's Children in Need total of over £37m? I'll stick my neck out and say I believe we can come very close. Over and over again I'm humbled by the generosity of our audience.

At any given time, a wide variety of appeals are being planned or broadcast. For example, the BBC's newest charity, the BBC Wildlife Fund, is working on a BBC Two appeal which will go out early in the summer next year and will look and feel very different from Children in Need and Comic Relief. At BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester they're searching for a charity partner for an appeal which will involve and inspire their audience for the whole of 2010. And Blue Peter is running the Send a Smile Appeal, encouraging its young audience to make T-shirts into medical gowns, to support cleft repair operations for children in India. I'll let you know how they get on.