5 weeks – Dancing shoes ready!

So the England football team have crashed and burned so it’s up to us to represent England on our international trip!

Tonight we have our final big fundraiser, a Barn Dance. Tickets sales have been slow – we have enough now to have a good evening but we are not going to hit the fundraising target. As long as we make some money and people enjoy themselves then that is fine.

But we are going to have to look carefully at the shortfall now and work out how to plug the gap in the next few weeks.

3rd Upminster Scout Group have kindly offered to support the leaders, young leaders and ex-scouts from 3rd Upminster – 10 in total in the participant group and have given us £500 towards the expedition. This is one off gift to demonstrate the Group’s support for Explorer and Network Scouting and is much appreciated.

There is much to do in the next few weeks – last minute fundraising to complete, a few vaccinations to complete, increased communication with the Gambians as we finalise arrangements and our final preparation event – the weekend of 5th/6th July. This will be at Hargreaves Scout Campsite (just off A12 in Goodmayes) and will include the briefing for all participants and parents.

Please let me know about grants as soon as you hear and I need any other money due in ASAP – from fundraising, from buy-a-brick or anything else!

We are about to transfer over some money to the Gambians so they can begin the building project – we have agreed a 14m diameter round building as a sun-shelter / training room which they will start to build in the next few weeks and we will help with when we are there. This will cost about £6500 – 7000, so far Hornchurch have raised about £2000 from buy-a-brick, Southend £2000 and the Southend leaders have secured a £3000 grant specifically towards the building which will give us the funds to complete this project.

This building will hopefully be the first part of a much bigger legacy to the Gambian Scouts in the Upper River Region but in itself will be a significant achievement and a big boost to their work.

Let’s get it all done and go please!