Newsletter

A Christmas message from our Chair Dear Members, Although we continue to find ourselves in the midst of the Covid crisis, I am pleased to acknowledge the ongoing efforts of our very dedicated tutors.  They have continued to offer exercise programmes by phone for so many of our members, and despite the weather, the walks that were started at the end of August, continue to take place across North Gwent on a weekly basis. We are all very hopeful that the introduction of the Covid vaccination will soon see our lives returning to some sort of normality.  With this in mind, the Trustees have already engaged in discussions on how to reintroduce the exercise class based activities that our members valued so much before the Covid crisis commenced. In preparation for this, the charity has strived to attract continued funding and I am pleased to announce that we have recently benefited from a sizeable donation from the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s Charities Committee.  The donation was then added to the £4,000 plus that we raised from our Everest Challenge ‘virtual walk’. We also owe a great deal of thanks to Kathy Cleveland who has once again been pivotal in organising this year’s Christmas Raffle which is due to be drawn on Tuesday 15th December 2020.  I’m sure the raffle will help increase our funding further as it has done in the past.  A special thank you to all those who have supported our fundraising efforts and [...]

Congratulations from our Chair Dear Members, I just want to congratulate everyone associated with completing the Everest challenge. Clearly there are a lot of  others, especially our members, who I am unable to include in this e mail but who helped us also and I am hoping you can help me pass on my thanks to them as well. I was hoping to send out a message today via the world walking site but I sent a motivational message a few weeks ago via the website and am told that you didn’t receive it so I won’t try it again. In my view I think you have all shown a huge sense of determination to get us over the line and in my opinion it’s a very proud day for the charity. The challenge has also helped to raise some much needed funds and when we are able to confirm the total I will let you all know. More importantly however the challenge helped us to reinstate exercise classes for our members and gave them a goal to reach for and this in itself made it all worthwhile. Perhaps we can consider undertaking another challenge at some stage in the future but for now I’m sure everyone needs to rest their weary legs. Thanks once again to you all. Gary Hicks Chair of the Board of Trustees