Greetings, and a very happy Christmas from all connected with the Aquinoe Learning Centre Charitable Trust.
Tina, Linda and Jean have been working extremely hard in the last year, first of all to register with the Charity Commission, and secondly to raise as much money as possible.
Linda read reams of material relating to setting up a charity, and Tina produced a whole series of forms with regard to sponsorship and banks! Jean spent much time liaising with Josphat, Director of the ALC, in Kenya.
We also had help in the initial stages with the stationery – all of the artwork including the logo and also the gift of the paper and printing, for which we are very grateful.
The summer was spent gathering masses of goods from friends and family in order to get up at some unearthly hour to sell aforementioned goods at boot fairs. None of us had had any experience in this direction before, but we soon learnt some of the tricks of the trade. We had started by spending ages pricing everything up beforehand, but soon realised that this was unnecessary, and learnt to gauge the price to charge on spot. Dave and Chris nobly gave a lot of support and came along to help on the stalls. All in all, we raised about £500 through the fairs.
In November we ran a quiz in Pembury, which was a huge success, and due to the generosity of all who attended and those who donated prizes for the raffle and auction, we raised the wonderful sum of £700. Many, many thanks.