Apron off, trainers on!

After using her brilliant baking skills to help raise funds at our exhibition “Developing Peru: Journeys of Inspiration” earlier this year, volunteer Becky Hibberd was inspired to fundraise via a rather different activity. She has decided to run the Swansea Bay 10k in September and will be asking for sponsorship to help us build the orphanage.

The event, which will take place in Swansea on September 23rd, attracted over 3,000 runners last year, many of whom ran for charities.

As you can see from the photo above, Becky has been training hard, despite the rain, and is looking forward to the race.

If you would like to sponsor her, please use the button below.

LEJoG-ing along

You may remember the trio of friends who set off to cycle the length of Britain – Land’s End to John o’Groats (LEJoG) no less – back in April this year. Well, they had such great support that it has taken up until now to get the final count in, and boy is it a big one! Roz, Lloyd and Dan raised over £750 and we would like to congratulate and thank them for their hard work! Unfortunately both the boys sustained injuries which meant they could not complete their journeys, but Roz soldiered on to finish the LEJoG in just 12 and a half days. We call that amazing!

Tough and Muddy

We’d like to say congratulations to Ian Trimmer, who completed the Tough Mudder 2012 – a hardcore 12 mile-long obstacle courses designed by the Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie – and raised over £400 to help us build the orphanage!

Ian says “It was hard at times, but it was actually a lot of fun! The worst was a pit full of ice water in which you had to submerse yourself. My muscles constricted and I could hardly move! The electric wires weren’t any fun either. One hit my right butt cheek which resulted in a dead bum for half an hour!”

I think I would have to agree with the words of one of Ian’s generous supporters, who said “I think you are completely mad for doing this, but huge respect!”

If you didn’t manage to donate before the event you can still show your support and help us build an orphanage by going to the original story here and clicking on the button at the bottom of the page.

Festival Fun…draising

This was the sight that greeted the lucky punters as they walked between the Siam Tent and the Big Red Tent in the main arena at WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) at the end of July. The weather was (weirdly) amazing so we were able to display our wares inside and out for most of the festival. A new edition to the stall – footwear – was particularly popular but the old summer favourites – earrings made by Marco from the orphanage – also held their own. Many passersby stopped to stroke our delightfully soft alpacas and, indeed, purchase them – we are now sold out! Luckily (for us) the nights became quite chilly, especially towards the end of the festival, so we sold a fair few jumpers and scarves. All in all we took over £1,600 between 2pm on Thursday and 10:30pm on Sunday.

Our beautiful new moo cards really caught the interest of the festival goers and we gave out a hefty 1,500 over the course of 4 days. Our youngest volunteer, Benen (3 and a half), proved to be an excellent marketer with his approach of running up to people and dramatically presenting them with a card. This generally worked very well (at least for those who looked down!) Another of our volunteers, Mim, decided that she preferred the more laid back approach (see photo below).

In addition we spoke to many, many people about what we do and got a lot of them to sign up for our newsletter. We made some great contacts too so watch out for new fundraising initiatives coming soon!

If we met you at WOMAD, we hope you enjoyed the experience and that you had a great festival!

They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words so I’ll say no more…