Investors

ITV’s charity and community support stretched far beyond health in 2009. We collaborate with a variety of organisations and offer air time to raise viewers’ awareness about important causes and inspire them to get involved, and to support disaster relief efforts. We also encourage our employees to contribute by volunteering for a cause they care about .

The People’s Millions

Community projects benefited from £3.5 million of National Lottery funding in November 2009, through The People’s Millions competition – a collaboration between ITV and the Big Lottery Fund.

Developed in response to the UK Government’s vision of more public involvement in the distribution of lottery funds, The People’s Millions supports projects that transform communities.

We profiled projects on our 6.00 pm regional news programmes across the UK, and gave the public the opportunity to decide which received funding. Viewers cast their votes, and around 70 winning projects each received awards of up to £50,000.

This is the fifth year in which ITV News Group has coordinated coverage of the People’s Millions competition, distributing more than £21 million to community projects across the UK.

“It’s been another great year for The People’s Millions, which, through ITV regional news programmes, gives the public a unique opportunity to decide which community projects are awarded Lottery funding. Congratulations to all the projects and thank you to all those that voted and helped make this competiton programme such a success.”

Michael Jermey, Director of News, Current Affairs and Sport

ITV Fixers

In 2009, ITV news programmes in our Anglia, Central, Meridian, West and Westcountry regions teamed up with the Public Service Broadcasting Trust on a project to encourage young people to get involved in their communities and to give them a voice.

ITV Fixers with vinspired.com is a major campaign created by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, giving young people between the ages of 16-25 the opportunity to tackle any issue that they feel strongly about. Over 1500 young people have taken part so far covering topics such as knife crime, body image, racism, homelessness and other issues pertinent to today’s youth. Funding for the scheme is provided by v, the National Young Volunteers Service.

Fixers develop their ideas and then draw on a range of expertise depending on whether they want to make a film, organise an event or run a publicity campaign. Some projects are featured on TV. These have included the creation of a simple cookbook for young single mothers, the performance of a play to challenge perceptions about disability and the creation of a website to support young victims of abuse.

We will roll ITV Fixers out to the rest of our English regions in 2010.

For more information, visit www.itvfixers.com.

Over to you - finding the next generation of news journalists

In June 2009, ITV teamed up the Big Lottery Fund and The b-live Foundation, a company that supports young people’s personal and career development, on Over to You - a search for the best young broadcasting talent in the UK. We asked student teams across the country to write a pitch for a local news story and offered 12 winning teams the chance to work with their local ITV news team to produce the feature, which we ran on regional 6.00 pm news programmes during early 2010. The initiative provided participants with insight into the broadcast industry, and helped them develop journalistic skills. Nearly 11,000 students from 138 schools took part.

Support for the Disasters Emergency Committee

ITV News has been a broadcast partner for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for over 40 years. When a large-scale international crisis strikes we script, voice, edit and broadcast a three-minute national television appeal, without charge.

In 2009, ITV aired appeals for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the Indonesian earthquake.