Dear John,

As we approach the end of 2023, we'd like to thank you - our dedicated members and supporters - for your support over a very busy year! 

In the spring we held our first annual Spring Action Month, leading into our We are Kindred spring appeal. Excitingly, this year - for the first time since the covid pandemic began - Population Matters fundraisers were able to, literally, run marathons for us!

Our grassroots Empower to Plan (E2P) projects continued to go from strength to strength as we welcomed our new E2P Coordinator. Shweta, who launched appeals for YVNO in Albania and NWERO in South Sudan. In early January 2024, Shweta will announce our next E2P partner - watch this space! We also expanded our reach - and our team - this year, broadening our campaign and media team by welcoming Madeleine and also our new Partnerships, Advocacy and Voice Manager, Abimbola.

In addition to our annual Change Champion Awards, we marked World Population Day in July by releasing a report and holding an online symposium, bringing together global experts to ask 'Is education the magic bullet?', the full 90 minutes of which can be viewed online.

As the autumn leaves began to fall, we called for action on population growth in the UK, following our work earlier year calling out the pronatalist policies increasingly adopted by many governments across the globe. Internationally, a Population Matters delegation was invited to speak at the Fifth International Conference on Sustainability Education in India, where we also took time to meet Indian campaigners and activists and learn about the challenges they face and how we might be able to help - a dialogue that is continuing. Not content with that, we issued our new report on biodiversity loss - Vanishing Icons: how population growth is driving our most-loved animals to extinction. 

Things didn't slow down towards the end of the year. In November, we publicised the unsustainable consumption associated with Black Friday, continuing our We Don't Buy It campaign. Our Head of Fundraising, Izi, moved on to an exciting new role in another organisation after successfully leading our fundraising team for nearly 4 years. 

To close out the year on a high, we held our 3rd annual The Big Give Christmas Challenge. The appeal was our most successful to date, achieving over 111% of our appeal target and raising over £22,000 in total - wow! What a way to end the year!

The incredible success of this fundraising challenge will allow us to return to the United Nations in 2024 when we look forward to participating in both the Commission on Population and Development and the Commission on the Status of Women. We will also be hosting a landmark Population Conversation event in Nigeria early next year.

2024 promises to be another exciting year, with a new Executive Director and a new Head of Fundraising joining us, and even more plans we look forward to sharing with you. We'd like to thank you for all your interest and support over a very eventful 2023.

Only with our valued supporters and members can we continue with our work. We'd love to welcome you as a member in 2024. Click here to join.

Wishing you the very best for the festive season on behalf of all the team at Population Matters,