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 11th 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 (8th 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 12th
and Sunday the 13th 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!
