Raising Funds for local and national charities

Thank you for your continued support for this GlobalGiving project. It is one of the various ways we raise money for our Benevolent Fund, from which we are able to support deserving local, national and international charities.

Helped by the generosity of you, our GlobalGiving supporters, since our last report in November we have made the following donations: 

• £600 to Mary's Meals, a charity we support annually, which provides lunches to schoolchildren in various counries in Africa. This donation was doubled to £1,200 by matched funding from the UK Government's Big Give scheme.
• £250 to Quilters Junior School RotaKids to support their Dementia Friends pen-pal project. The children exchange letters regularly with their elderly pen-pals and occasionally meet for tea and games.
• £1,000 to MSF in response to the earthquake in Turkey/Syria.
• £1,000 to Red Cross in response to the earthquake in Turkey/Syria.
• £1,000 to St Luke’s Hospice, a charity we support annually.
• £1,000 to Little Havens Children’s Hospice, a charity we support annually.
• £1,000 to Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund, a charity we support annually.
• £200 to Changing Pathways, a local charity supporting victims of domestic abuse.
• £300 to Anna’s Place, a local initiative providing a weekly 'warm space', with hot refreshments and social activities (e.g. board games, art & craft activities, jig-saw puzzles, etc.) for elderly people, including those with dementia.

Thank you once again for your continued support.

Thanks you for your continued support for this project. It is one of the various ways we raise money for our Benevolent Fund, from which we are able to support deserving local, national and international charities.

Helped by the generosity of you, our GlobalGiving supporters, since our last report in July we have made the following donations:

• £100 to Billericay Food Bank, towards ongoing running costs. The Food Bank is currently supporting about 80 - 90 families each week. This compares to about 15 per week at the start of lockdown.

• £500 to DEC, in response to the flooding in Pakistan. This donation was doubled to £1,000 by matched funding from the government's Big Give scheme.

• £500 to ShelterBox, also in response to the Pakistan floods. ShelterBox is a charity set up by Rotary in 2000 which provides 'survival kits' in a box for families made homeless by a disaster. Each box contains a tent plus cooking equipment, supplies and tools to meet a homeless family's basic needs. Once the tent etc. has been unpacked, the box provides watertight storage.

• £500 to a project funded by us and five other Rotary Clubs that will provide 30 Biolite kits to families in Kenya who do not have access to mains electricity. Each BioLite kit consists of a small portable solar panel which charges a central control box. This provides a USB socket for charging mobile devices and an MP3/FM radio system. It also powers 3 hanging lights on 6m daisy-chain leads.

Looking ahead, I'd like to highlight our END POLIO NOW Christmas Challenge. This is a GlobalGiving microproject we have created to raise funds for Rotary's End Polio Now campaign. We're challenging people to donate £20 (or more) to this project on 29th November (Giving Tuesday) so that we can earn a share of the $1.2m bonus fund which GlobalGiving is distributing proportionately across all donations made on that day. We ran a similar microproject last year and each donation earned a bonus of about 30%, resulting in a donation of over £2,200 to End Polio Now, so we'd be delighted if you would put 29th November in your diary and make a donation on the day by following the link below.

Thank you once again for your continued support and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Links:

• END POLIO NOW Christmas Challenge 2022

This GlobalGiving project is one of the various ways we raise money for our Benevolent Fund, from which we are able to support deserving local, national and international charities.

Helped by the generosity of you, our GlobalGiving supporters, since our last report in March we have made the following donations:

• £200 to Barrow Farm Riding for the Disabled, a charity we support on a regular basis. This supported their summer ‘Driving Holiday’, enabling 6 disabled carriage drivers to experience driving at Ashfields Carriage Driving Centre which included lessons with Minta Winn, an international carriage driver.
• £1,000 to Billericay Food bank, towards purchase of a van to collect and distribute food donations. Previously the food bank had to make do with use of a minibus which was less than ideal for their purposes.
• £100 to Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund, a local charity we support annually, which provides practical, financial and emotional support to the families of children living with cancer.
• £230 to provide a day out at Old Macdonald’s Farm activity centre for children with behavioural difficulties from Ramsden Hall Academy, as part of Rotary’s ‘Kids Out’ programme. Several club members participated in this event, supporting the staff who were responsible for the children.
• £100 to Friends of Lake Meadows towards the costs of their annual photographic competition. This is an annual event open to the whole community, adults and children, and we provide this sponsorship each year.
• £200 to St Luke’s Hospice, another charity we support regularly, in response to their ‘Nurses Day’ appeal.
• £1,580 to Rotary’s own charity, the Rotary Foundation. This donation is funded entirely by donations from club members, each of whom commits to give at least $100 each year to the Rotary Foundation. Clubs can seek grants from the Rotary Foundation to help fund major projects and we were awarded £5,750 towards our Borewells project from this source.

 Thank you for continuing to support this project.

This GlobalGiving project is one of the various ways we raise money for our Benevolent Fund, from which we are able to support deserving local, national and international charities.

Helped by the generosity of you, our GlobalGiving supporters, since our report last November we have made the following donations:

• £100 to Essex & Herts Air Ambulance, a charity we support on a regular basis.
• £387.50 to Orbis, an international charity providing state-of-the-art eyecare, plus training to local ophthalmic practitioners, in countries where this expertise would not otherwise be available, by means of an adapted airliner complete with an operating theatre and lecture hall. We support Orbis each year by means of a sponsored blindfolded walk by the President.
• £100 to Lennox Children’s Cancer Fund, a local charity we support annually, which provides practical, financial and emotional support to the families of children living with cancer.
• £2,241.73 to End Polio Now, Rotary’s campaign to rid the world of Polio. This money was largely raised through our GlobalGiving Christmas Quiz microproject and you can read our separate report on that microproject here
• £600 to Mary’s meals, an international charity which provides daily meals to schoolchildren in some of the poorest parts of the world. This money was raised through our weekly wine raffle and our donation was matched 100% by the UK government.
• £200 towards the travel costs of a local Girl Guide who has been selected to attend the World Jamboree to be held in South Korea next year.
• £554 to fund completion of the 10^th well delivered by our Borewells Project in Kenya.

In addition to the above, the Ukraine crisis has clearly demanded a response and we have drawn on some of our reserves to supplement the following donations:

• £500 to Billericay Mayflower Rotary towards the cost of an additional lorry being driven to the orphanage they support in Moldova to help with the additional demands placed on the orphanage by refugees from Ukraine
• £500 to Médecins Sans Frontières, to support the work they are doing in Ukraine.
• £750 to the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, towards support for Ukrainian refugees arriving in the UK.

 Thank you for continuing to support this project.

This GlobalGiving project is one of the various ways we raise money for our Benevolent Fund, from which we are able to support deserving local, national and international charities.

Helped by the generosity of you, our GlobalGiving supporters, in the first four months of the Rotary year we have been able to make the following donations:

• £300 to Little Havens Children's Hospice, a local charity that we support on an annual basis, which provides overnight respite breaks, emergency stays and end of life care for children with cancer.
• £500 to Broomfield Hospital Renal Unit, supporting a Rotary project to install a new type of dialysis machine.
• £250 to Barrow Farm, a member of the Riding for the Disabled Association, and a local charity we support annually which provides horse riding and carriage driving facilities for children and adults with special needs and disabilities.
• £200 to the RAF Benevolent Fund, following a talk given at one of our meetings by Commander Mike Sugden on his experiences flying Tornados on active service.
• £200 to Lennox Children's Cancer Fund, another local charity we support annually, which provides practical, financial and emotional support to the families of children living with cancer.
• £200 to Mary's Meals, an international charity which provides daily meals to schoolchildren in some of the poorest parts of the world, to support their response to the earthquake in Haiti.
• £100 to Hope & Homes for Children, an international charity we support annually, which works alongside governments and civil society organisations in over 30 countries to dismantle orphanage-based care systems.
• £200 to Basildon Hospital Radio, our contribution to a joint project by the Rotary Clubs in Billericay and Basildon to provide a new mixing desk for the radio studio.

Thank you for continuing to support this project.