If you’re planning on sending a charity ecard this Christmas then jolly well hold your reindeers. The Children’s Trust, one of the UK’s leading charities working with severely disabled kids, has teamed up with ipadio, the phonecast people, to make your ecard extra special this year.

Sending out an ecard is still a bit impersonal. OK, you might add an electronic signature and a happy mugshot, but still it’s just pixels. Now The Children’s Trust has extended its seasonal card range to include a personalised message that’s recorded using any telephone.

You can try it now at www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/xmas. It costs nothing to create the card, so why not have a go and see what you think? If you’re happy with the results, you choose the level of donation and send as many as you’d like. Just choose your card, call a local rate number, sing ‘ding, dong merrily on high’ down your phone, and suddenly you’ll have your valued customers in tears (of laughter probably!).

‘We’ve had such fun playing with this year’s cards – just listening to the ipadio team murder Silent Night had us in stitches, but what’s exciting for us is that our ecards offer a unique way for companies to a: communicate a warm Christmas message to their customers and staff and b: make a generous donation to the work of The Children’s Trust’ says Liz Haigh-Reeve the Fundraising Director of The Children’s Trust.

The e-card service from The Children’s Trust is available from www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/xmas and only takes a few minutes and a free phone call to set up – all donations go straight to The Children’s Trust to aid their work with disabled children.

Dr Mark K Smith CEO of ipadio commented ‘We’ve worked with The Children’s Trust for years and they are such a special bunch of people. Their work with severely disabled kids is just inspirational, so for us to offer to integrate ipadio into their Christmas cards was a pleasure. Both Nemisys and ipadio will be making a donation to The Children’s Trust this Christmas to send out our own ecard to our people, though I do think my opening line for Silent Night sung in the style of Paul Robeson is an inspiration to tone deaf people the world over’

To hear an example of the cards in action just click the link below and cover your ears:

Listen to the ipadio team lay to rest the myth that technologists can’t sing - www.nemisys.uk.com/ipadio-ecard

Or if you’d prefer to watch a video of the ecard creation process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQI5w4atNr8