We’re excited to announce that Chris Tarrant, Launchpad patron Matt Allwright, and BBC Radio’s Michelle ‘Babs’ Jordan will be making guest appearances at the Big Sleep Out at home – which is taking place on World Homeless Day, Saturday 10 October, to help raise £25,000 to prevent homelessness in Reading.

Professor Robert Van de Noort has joined the charity as a patron and will be taking part in Launchpad’s fundraiser, Big Sleep Out at home, later this year on World Homeless Day, Saturday 10 October.

We didn’t want COVID-19 and social distancing to put a stop to the much-loved annual event, the Big Sleep Out. Which is why this year, we are hosting the event virtually and asking people to brave the outdoors to raise vital funds in a garden!

Launchpad is teaming up with My Favourite Voucher Codes to take part in their charity poll. As one of four charities in the lineup, we’re in with a chance to win 20% of the site’s profits, which will help us continue to provide our support through our housing and homelessness services.

For the last few weeks, we have been working hard to ensure that we can safely start to open the building to clients and people in need of support, ready for when lockdown started to ease. What are these changes and how have we adapted our services to keep clients, staff and our community safe?

Back in April we launched our COVID-19 emergency appeal so we can continue delivering our vital support to extremely vulnerable people during the outbreak – and you have helped us smash our target and raise a magnificent £42,264!

The Reading brand of tech delivery specialist, AND Digital, offered Launchpad free technical support on our website earlier this year – and has now moved

Reading-born 20 year-old Jessy Blakemore has raised £1070 to date for charities including Launchpad, by hand painting t-shirts and corsets and selling them via Instagram

Earlier this month, a group of Reading based musicians released Musos4…Reading’s Homeless – a compilation album of new songs from local artists, all to raise money for Launchpad’s COVID-19 emergency appeal.

Launchpad staff are key workers during this national emergency and we are pulling out all the stops to ensure our clients and members of the public receive vital support during the pandemic – while keeping our teams, clients and the community safe.