About AnyChange
Austen and Hannah are Father and Daughter, we live with the rest of our family between Leeds and Wakefield.
Hannah and I were going to Morrisons one cold dark evening and upon nearing the shop’s entrance Hannah quickly diverted us away to first go to the cashpoint. After she had withdrawn her cash, on the way back to Morrison’s entrance I asked her why she had got some cash out given we were going to the shop where they obviously accept card payments. Hannah said that she had seen a homeless person close by and she didn’t have any money to give to him so had got some cash out… so she could then make an unnecessary low value purchase from the newsagent in order to get some change so that she could then give some change to the homeless person!
Upon explaining her thought process to me a few things struck me:
- firstly, what a kind, caring and generous young lady Hannah had grown up to become.
- secondly, increasingly people just are not carrying cash or any change anymore – this is particularly true of younger people.
- given this, people living on the streets must be finding it increasingly difficult to collect money i.e. people may want to help them, but if helping requires them to literally go out of their way rather than just the impromptu reaching into their pockets without breaking step, then this will doubtless mean that less money is gifted in the traditional way.
Hannah and I discussed this, we mulled the problem over and, after doing some research, the AnyChange concept crystalised and the service developed from there.