We continue to welcome new families to our group and numbers are growing.
One of our biggest achievement this year was to celebrate 30 years of AIMS on 16th July 2022 and we invited lots of guests along to join in our celebrations. It was amazing to see so many people join us for the occasion and to welcome back some of our old families whose children are now young adults.
Our Founder, Jill Diprose received the British Empire Medal in a ceremony at the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre in Lympstone. Jill was given the award in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for 2022 in recognition of her services to local families and children with special needs.
We celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in style and our very own Bert played the National Anthem in full military dress which the children thoroughly enjoyed.
We held our annual sponsored walk from Powderham Church to Turf Locks and back and managed to raise the massive sum of £1,273.00. A massive thank you to Clive at Turf Locks who provided all the children with pizza and juice. We all had a great day out.
Our very own Isabella took it upon herself to organise a swim-a-thon to raise some money for AIMS and raised the grand sum of £546.03.
We have had some fantastic trips out this year. We took the children to Devon Windsurf and Canoe Centre where they were able to participate in kayaking. This was a massive achievement for some of our children who overcame their fears and got stuck in.
We have visited The Orange Elephant Ice-Cream Parlour, been crabbing on the back beach in Teignmouth and had a trip out to Haldon Forest.
We took the opportunity this year to offer a few further sessions mid-week during the summer holidays where we were able to make use of the forest school area within the school.
We continue to receive very generous donations and have been very fortunate this year. Paradigm Norton donated the sum of £1,000.00. Our regular supporters Wanda and Peter Chislett donated £400.00, Dawlish Warren Golf Club have given us £270.00, Holcombe Residents Association have sent us £250.00 and Dawlish Water Rotary kindly donated £130.00. We continue with our own fund-raising efforts and managed to raise £451.25 selling cakes on the lawn during August, the massive sum of £4,968.75 was raised at our annual BBQ at The Swan Inn thanks to all the regulars and Vinnie and Ali at The Swan for all their hard work. Our Annual Leek Show at The Castle, Holcombe raised £382.00. All of these donations allow us to keep supporting our families and to welcome new families into the group.
The year has flown by and the children are making lasting friendships which has helped a lot of them through the transition to different schools. It is incredibly special to watch our children grow and flourish. This has only been possible because of all of our loyal supporters and our staff and volunteers who give up so much of their time behind the scenes to make this all happen.
