Today I went to a great meeting today between our PR Agency and representatives of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, who work for the creative agency, Propaganda. To read more about the Sophie Foundation, click here.
The plan was to discuss how we can get the Sophie Lancaster Foundation [and the work done by her Mother, Sylvia] into the media spotlight where it belongs. Sylvia has worked tirelessly since the murder of her daughter and met with influential politicians such as Jack Straw and Michael Gove to work towards changing the law that would see thugs who target sub cultures get sentenced under hate crime laws. I was astonished to discover today that most cases of violence towards people for looking different is not classified as a hate crime - ie, being attacked for your race or sexual orientation.After the meeting, I went with Emma and Claire [who work closely with Sylvia and recently redesigned the website and the Myspace page, as well as launching a twitter] for a coffee to talk in more detail about the foundation and where the money raised goes.
"The bulk of the donations that the charity receives will be ploughed back into national educational workshops. The S.O.P.H.I.E workshops have been created to educate young people about subcultures and teach them how to be tolerant and accepting of everyone.
Money will also be spent on the promotion of tolerance via events, sponsorship and materials.The Sophie Lancaster Foundation is actively lobbying parliament to drive a change in the hate crime legislation to support and protect subcultures, and some funds will also be used to facilitate this ongoing drive." Says Claire Anderson, charity representative.
Next week is the second anniversary of Sophie's death on Monday we will be focusing you will be able to purchase S.O.P.H.I.E wristbands and the Medium Pencil in 'Sophie' - our best selling black pencil.
I hope you will support us in promoting this wonderful charity in remembrance of a beautiful, innocent girl targeted for nothing more than the clothes she was wearing. To read more about this, check out this previous blog post. *You can also purchase S.O.P.H.I.E merchandise here.*
