I hope you are all well and enjoying the longer days.
June has been a very busy month with nearly 13,000 items of kit being handed over to partners for onward delivery. This has included 21 separate visits to the containers in Hemel Hempstead, a boxing up session at Hatfield and a big handover from Peter’s garage in Sale. As you can see, KitAid is close to becoming a full time charity.
Here are the latest totals
Items sent out in June – 12,915
Items sent out in 2023 – 64,250
Items sent out since 1998 – 998,147
Items required to reach 1 Million – 1,853
We are now within finger tip distance of reaching 1,000,000 donated items and I have a meeting next week with The FA to discuss how we can celebrate/recognise this milestone.
25th Anniversary Celebration
Dietary Requirements – Thanks to those who have replied to the email I sent out last week. Surprisingly we only have a very small number of requests for vegetarian/vegan buffet options. If you are still to reply and do require this option please reply to avoid confusion on the night.
Auction/Raffle prizes – We are still very short of raffle prizes and thanks to those who have donated so far. If you are able to get something to me in July/August it will avoid us having to buy prizes. If you are able to donate an “experience” type prize for the auction, such as tickets for an event (from September) it would also be really helpful.
25 Year history – I am about to lock myself away for a couple of months to write the 25 year history of KitAid, to hand out on the night of the Celebration event as a printed programme. I have started the research but the early years from 1998 to 2002 are a bit sketchy. If anyone has photos of a boxing up session at Bishops Rise, Hatfield, could you please send them to me. Or any history from the early years.
Facebook site
Unfortunately our FB site was “hacked” and some of you may have received a message purporting to be from KitAid. This is really frustrating and since then I have stopped posting anything to the site.
Interestingly, we have much more exposure on Twitter (@kitaid) and a recent post received 29k views compared to an average of 20 on FB,
Our Instagram site (KitAid Charity) is growing and I try to post a story every day.
Could I ask please that until the FB site is safe you either log on to the Twitter or instagram sites to see the latest pictures/stories.
25 for 25 Challenge
Congratulations to Barrie N on beating his fundraising target of £250 while he continues his challenge of visiting 25 football grounds across Essex.
The next big challenge to start is with Matt T who has arranged to run 25 laps of the pitch at Hitchin Town FC before their pre-season friendly match against Watford FC U21’s on Tuesday 25th July. It would be great if we could get a few KitAid supporters along to the match to cheer him on. Further details including a link to Matt’s Just Giving page will be sent out before the run and if you would like to watch him on the night, please let me know.
Good luck to Karen and Peter who are continuing with their running /swimming challenges.
There are still six months of the 25th Anniversary year left so if you are considering a challenge please let me know.
Sponsorship
Although our income is incredibly small, we do have a policy of sponsoring events that are close to our heart, whenever funds allow.
As you will know, we have sponsored the brilliant Football Camp in Ballysillan, Belfast for a number of years. We have done so again, with a donation of £1,000. It is even more poignant this year as very sadly, one of the Ballysillan YFC team recently passed. We have got to know Grace (Boyes) over recent years and she was a lovely, engaging, inspiring young person. Our donation is in her memory and myself and Steve A will be visiting Football Camp on Wednesday 19th July to pay KitAid’s respect to Grace.
We have also agreed to co-sponsor the Bulindi Chimpanzee Protection football tournament in Uganda again this year with a donation of £500. If funds allow and we make a healthy profit from the 25th Anniversary celebration, we may be able to increase this by a further £500.
Regional Co-ordinator – Accra, Ghana
The role has become global!! Welcome to Lydia A.
You may have seen some recent posts announcing Lydia as our very first Regional Co-ordinator in Africa. This is a new concept and I am keen to see how things work for Lydia. She expressed an interest in helping KitAid and we do have a lot of projects in Accra/Ghana. I am looking at ways we can use existing partners to get kit to her, but the first box arrived thanks to Fafali and she has been busy handing out kit to various teams in Accra.
If it works in Accra we can look into slowly expanding the role across other countries where we have a stronger presence.
HELP!
I have left this request until the end as I always wonder if readers get this far on the monthly update! Only joking!!
If you are attending the 25th Anniversary Celebration in September there are a number of tasks that I need help with, either prior to or on the night itself. I would like to form a small team to share the jobs around. We can hold some Teams/Zoom meetings over the next few weeks to discuss ideas and progress.
I do need help as in previous years we have had more people involved in organising the 10th,15th and 20th Celebrations and I honestly have too many things flying around in my brain!! Please let me know if you can help.
I think these are the main things for June and as ever, thanks to everyone for your work behind the scenes and it won’t be too long before we can all raise a glass to reaching I Million items of donated kit.
Thanks
Derrick