The start of 2015 has proved to be another busy period at AIMS. I am thoroughly enjoying my role as Co-Ordinator and have to say it is made all the easier by the wonderful staff and volunteers who have helped me over the last year. I cannot believe I have now been doing this for a whole year.
Christmas seems like such a long time ago now but both the Santa Train and the Christmas Party were a great success. I was also lucky enough to attend the Christmas Carol Concert at Luscombe Castle which was a really special evening and AIMS were lucky enough to receive yet more donations. We were also again invited to attend the annual Pantomime at Shaftesbury Theatre. This was attended by a few families and everyone had a great time.
During January AIMS were one of the charities supported by Waitrose under their Community Matters scheme. We have yet to receive the cheque but we have been awarded the grand sum of £467.00. As well as receiving a huge sum of money this has raised our profile as many people noticed and we collected more tokens than the other two nominated charities.
We have welcomed a lot of new families which is great and even though the website is not yet “up to scratch” we are receiving lots of enquiries from both families and others.
Joining our team of volunteers we now have on board Emma Hawley who is particularly interested in music therapy and Hannah Withers who is keen on swimming. Due to the extra support it is hoped we can now offer swimming on a more regular basis as this is extremely popular with the children.
We continue to receive donations. We have received a further donation of £92.30 which was raised at a works Christmas Party by way of a raffle and a quiz and other donations are flowing in from local establishments.
We recently had a visit from “Real Party Animals” which proved a great hit with the children. The children found it highly entertaining and I expect will remember the occasion for some time to come.
We have a trip to Clip ‘n’ Climb coming up on 21st March 2015 and 28 children will benefit from this.
I am going to concentrate my efforts now on getting the website updated and looking forward to the next couple of months.
We’ve got some fantastic activities lined up and always welcome new families so please feel free to come along and visit us at Oaklands Park School on a Saturday morning.
