79 Orphans in School

Back in May, we were able to place our first 79 orphans into school, so what has been the result of this so far?

These 79 children are now able to be sponsored for just £15 a month per child. This will ensure that these children are kept in school, well fed, and treated for any medical purposes. We will be launching our child sponsorship page on our website shortly however in the meantime if you are interested in sponsoring one of our 79 orphans please get in touch.

We have received letters of appreciation, gratitude and thanks for placing these children in school. We are also currently working on a short video to post up on our website soon, so you can see how thankful these people are for all your help and support.

Quiz Evening

Do you like team quizzes and are available on Saturday 30th June at 7pm? Then come along to our CBF fundraiser which is a quiz evening! Tickets are £3 each and we will be hosting the event at the Reading Family Church Offices. Please contact events@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk to book in.



In other fundraising news we are now signed up on www.charitygiving.co.uk which makes your fundraising easier. Check it out for further information.

79 at School, Climbing Everest & Running 10K!

Creating Better Futures reached a huge milestone on Tuesday this week. It came as a great surprise to us all, but we have managed to send 79 children to school for the next term!!! This is absolutely fantastic news, and we will provide an update soon as to how the children are getting on. The boxes which were mentioned in our previous post are now having to be delayed in being dispatched until we get the funds required.

 

Last weekend was also busy and exciting for the team as we had our Conquering Everest and Woodley 10K as our two fundraising events. We are pleased to announce that we reached our target and managed to climb the height of Everest in just under 8 hours. Much fun was had on the day by everyone involved and we greatly appreciate everybody's efforts on the day.

The Woodley 10K was also a huge success and everybody crossed the finish line in good time. On both events we also had a 'Name the Teddy' competition, and congratulations to Tommy who won and took home a new friend!

Lastly, thank you to everyone who donated on these two occasions. From both events we have raised around £1,000! If you would like to fundraise for us we are now set up on  Charity Giving which makes collecting funds easier. If you need a fundraising pack or sponsorship form, visit our website.

Boxes

Here are the boxes we have packed so far full of clothes, cuddly toys, books and games, pens, bags, shoes etc ready to be sent to Zimbabwe.
It is not too late to give your unwanted things! Please get in touch to info@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk and we can arrange a collection. A date to dispatch the boxes will be confirmed soon.

Fundraising Opportunities

We need your help! Here is a quick overview on some of the events coming up. If you would like to get involved or find out more, please contact events@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk

Monday 7th May - Race for Better Futures (Shinfield 10k Run)
Saturday 12th May - Conquering Everest Climbing Challenge
Sunday 13th May - Race for Better Futures (Woodley 10k or 3k run)
Date to be confirmed - Quiz/Games evening

Fundraising

Since our last update, much has been happening at Creating Better Futures. Lots of ideas for fundraising are flying about and we have already mentioned a couple of these events in our previous blog, which are still underway in organising. We have had a good response from volunteers to either climb or run for us, at the Woodley run and Climbing Everest Challenge, both coming soon in May. (12th and 13th) The sponsership forms have been finished, distributed, and now our volunteers are currently getting sponsered and collecting as much money as possible. One other friend of Creating Better Futures called Lesley is not only running the Woodley run for us, but has also set up a coffee morning and quiz to help raise money for us! This will be on the 11th of April.


We have branched our further with fundraising and have gone into corporate sponsership! We have recruited a new member of the team called James, who has taken on leading our corporate sponsership for fundraising. James can be contacted at james@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk James has been working hard over the past few weeks and has gotten us contacts to raise further money.


We have also gotten in touch with an American charity called SOUP (Supporting Orphans in Uganda Project) which have similar views and values as Creating Better Futures. Click here to see more about what they do. We do aim to work in other countries so this is a great oppertunity for us to branch out. We are currently finalising details as to how we can work together. Watch this space!

Another exciting milestone for us is that we have been in our local paper! See the online version by clicking here.

Packing boxes for our next resourcing program is now underway, and a date to dispatch the boxes to Zimbabwe will be agreed shortly. It has been very exciting to pack the clothes, toys and games knowing that this will all reach a child in need. We have sent boxes before which were joyfully and gratefully received. If you have any unwanted clothes, toys, school bags, pencil cases, stationary or anything that would be useful, it is not too late to get in touch. Contact info@creatingbetterfutures.org.uk for further details. Please note we cannot send toys or games which require batteries.

The school term in Zimbabwe begins in May and we are hoping to start sending our first few children to school! The children of Zimbabwe have been so patient waiting for us to get up and running so lets start finally in making a difference to their lives.

Please check back soon for further updates.

Officially Launched

Hello and welcome to our first post on our official blog! We will be writing here regularly to keep people informed with what's going on at Creating Better Futures. Whether that be fund raising, volunteer work, events, and of course how we are all helping and making a difference in people’s lives.

Creating Better Futures is a non-profit organisation helping orphaned and vulnerable children through a long term commitment to support their education and welfare. You can find out more on our newly launched official website by visiting http://www.creatingbetterfutures.org.uk We are on LinkedIn and also update Face Book, Twitter and Google+ regularly.

The four of us started discussing the charity in August 2011 primarily revolving around Zimbabwe and the current needs there for orphaned children. Since August up until now, things have moved extremely quickly for us. We have set up and run a weekly feeding program for up to 150 orphans. We partner with a deprived primary school where a third of the pupils are orphaned. Word of our work has spread like wildfire and we receive referrals from the Social Welfare department. A friend originally from Zimbabwe has offered us to use part of her land she owns there to harvest and grow crops for food, we have researched the organisation Foundations for Farming and how we can work together, and we have sent over 40 boxes full of clothes, toys, medicines etc to the orphanages in Zimbabwe. On top of all this, we are now registered on Companies House as a non-profit organisation and celebrated the official launch on February 11^th 2012 with family and friends. It was an extremely exciting day for us all, not to mention there was plenty of tea and cake too!

Now that we are officially set up, the hard work can now begin! We have started to receive a few donations and a couple of regular givers which we are so thankful for. Once the new term in Zimbabwe starts (8^th May) we will be using the funds received so far to start placing children into school. We need to ensure that we always have enough funds to keep these children in school and not just for the one term, so all of your donations are needed and greatly appreciated. We plan to update you in May once we know how many children we can place into a school so watch this space!

Our next big events occur on Saturday the 12^th and Sunday the 13^th of May. On the Saturday a team of people aim to climb the height of Everest on an indoor climbing wall to raise money for Creating Better Futures. What makes this event even more exciting is that we also aim to break a Guinness World Record! On the Sunday is a 10k and 3k run where we are just starting to set up being sponsored for. We also have a friend from America running 8k for us in May which she is currently training for. It seems like May is the month for us! If you’d like to fundraise for us, (even if it’s not in May!) please contact us.

As we are getting busier and busier we need extra resources. Some of you which have been following our journey so far have expressed an interest to help, and so we have just released some volunteer opportunities. This is for coordinating fundraising events, trusts and grants fundraising, marketing and communications, charity promotion and campaigns, charity/non-profit law, research, corporate or major donor fundraising and developing partnerships. If you would like to know more about these roles or interested in helping us, please get in touch!

There is so much for us to do and we cannot do it without your help. Thank you so much to those who have helped so far whether that be donating, following us online, or just listening to us or utilising your time with us. Together we are Creating Better Futures!