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 March
2010
Website Report
from Region 3
Sue Allen
(In case you were
wondering, the North Midlands region is the bit squashed in the middle
and bounded by Wales plus every other English Smiles area except the
South East. This makes us really easy to access and visitors are
always made very welcome!)
Historically, many of our
activities have taken place in North Derbyshire and this is where the
Smiles Educational
Advisor, Stephen Woodward and his wife Carol
are based. I’m very grateful to Stephen and Carol for providing much
of the raw material for this report. We now also have many smaller
groups working hard in other parts of the region and we look forward
to supporting and growing them in the future.
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What happened in
2009?
 One of the
big fund-raisers is always the
Smiles Christmas Market held at St John’s, Walton
in Chesterfield. November 28th 2009 witnessed the greatest gathering
of wonderful cakes, hand-made cards, excellent present ideas and other
seasonal items seen in Chesterfield since, well…..…..the 2008 Smiles
Christmas Market! If you’ve been part of a similar event, you’ll
realise how much organisation and preparation is needed but also how
much fun and fellowship is generated from working as a team, carrying
out God’s work. These two young ladies ran the
Teddy Bear’s Picnic for 4 hours
and raised an amazing £80.
Their smiles are proof that they enjoyed themselves. |
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The face
painters are guides from 1st Walton.
The event raised the grand total of £2627.50 which included £746.50
donated by Barclay’s
Bank, who match the
amount raised by Sheila
Dunn, seen here on the
cake stall with Mission
Tripper Aileen Parry.
This money will
benefit the
Joint Facility of Love.
You may like to mark
November 27th 2010
in your diaries for a trip to Chesterfield for the next event. You’ll
also have time to visit the historic market town of Chesterfield and
the many other attractions in the area, although, of course, please
spend all your money at the Smiles Market!
Also supporting the Joint
Facility of Love is
Maureen Gartland in
Brimington. Maureen raised approximately £1000 at a coffee morning on
20th February – that sounds like a lot of coffee but I also suspect
that delicious cakes were eaten.
Kate Brookbank
raised £200 by holding events at Loundsley Green Church.
Peggy Feltham
in Sutton Coldfield beavers away
tirelessly as always and is never afraid of a challenge.
(Some of you may recall that Peggy took her guitar into the Bull Ring
in Birmingham at Christmas 2008 to sing carols, by herself, on the
coldest day of the year)
Happily, Peggy’s fingers thawed out in time for her to raise more
money entertaining and speaking at meetings. This, together with cash
donations and a table-top sale, have raised at least £950. Peggy went
on her first Christmas Mission Trip in December and reports that it
was very different from her other visits, Also in the West Midlands,
Suzanne Coward’s
son is a chef who cooked a meal for a group which raised a magnificent
£200.
Well done to all of you. |
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Looking Forward
....... I’m most
excited our region has taken the ‘Container
Challenge’
and now we know the arrival of our container should be in mid-April
and will be located very close to
J28 of the M1.
At last we can start to encourage collections of items on the
WISH
list,
knowing that we have appropriate storage and transport. I suspect that
it won’t take many months for us to fill it. For those of you eager to
get started, we will encourage you to collect a specific group of
items from your area/church. This makes packing and labelling easier
and will ensure that we use every possible corner.
A suggested list will be sent out
to you on request. I also
hope to send you a photo of our lovely container as soon as I can.
 You
may not realise (as I didn’t) that
Simon White,
who is Stephen & Carol’s son-in-law, runs the Sheffield half marathon
each year and has raised approximately £500 annually for Smiles over
the past six years. Here’s Simon (with a smile, of course!), just in
case you bump into him anywhere and want to press money into his hand!
This year’s event takes place on
25 April
and more sponsorship is always welcome. Sheffield is a hilly city but
with some great views when you get to the top and it also goes without
saying that if anyone else is feeling energetic…………..!!! |
2010 is a good year
for Big Birthdays.
Both Chris and Pat Calow from Chesterfield reach 60 in June and have
requested donations in lieu of gifts to be given to the
Vision Project
which is part of the important Smiles medical work in Tileagd.
Here’s Chris at work in the
Tileagd Centre.
Also celebrating an important
milestone in February is
Maria Dent
from Belper. Maria held an
interesting event on 27 February at St Peter’s Belper, intriguingly
called “Maria’s friends have got talent”. Several of us volunteered to
do a turn and all donations in lieu of presents will be given towards
the building of a
care home for the elderly
in memory of Maria’s dad.
We’ll just miss the publication deadline so a further short report
will follow in a few weeks.
(News just in, they raised at
least £360 for Smiles and a really enjoyable evening was had too!) |
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Lastly, we continue to visit and
support the work being done in
primary schools
in the area. Recently, Stephen and I did a whistle-stop tour of
several supportive schools, although we didn’t manage to see all of
them. (Perhaps we drank staff-room coffee and chatted for too long at
the first few.) It was my first visit and I was so impressed to see
whole walls devoted to Smiles with photographs of sponsored children
and the various Smiles projects.
We met some mature and
enthusiastic 10-year-olds who sit on school councils and who are very
eager to start filling our container.
I have promised to take lots of photos on my June Mission Trip to send
to them. We are very aware that, not only do we need to encourage
other schools to take part, we also need to work hard to maintain the
relationship we have with our existing schools.
I do hope that I haven’t
missed out anyone; if I have, please accept my apologies. If you
contact me with your news, I’ll make sure it goes into a further
interim report.
Sue
Allen
Development Associate for Region 3 - North Midlands
sueallen@thesmilesfoundation.org
Region 3: South Yorkshire,
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire,
Staffordshire, Shropshire, West Midlands.
Previous Reports
Scotland, February 2010
South East
Counties, January 2010
Southern Counties, December 09
North East, November 09
South
West, October 09
Northern Ireland, September 09
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