We're right in the middle of another busy Easter playscheme! The kids have been having a fantastic time this week and the teens will get their turn next week. Meanwhile our Adults have had two of their four days together also.
It's only going to get busier too as we have a major month or so of fundraising coming up. We're delighted to have Matt Furniss, one of our longest 'serving' volunteers and members of staff, running the London Marathon for us on Sunday 24th April. Matt is currently training hard and no doubt 'feeling the burn' as he clocks up the miles of prep. He's hoping to raise a brilliant £1,000 through his run and he's already well on the way. If you know Matt and would like to encourage him with some sponsorship, just head to his giving page by clicking here.
We're also very excited to finally be able to announce that we will be one of the charities benefitting from this year's Woking Bikeathon, which starts at 10am on Sunday 8th May! A huge thank you to the Woking Rotary for this amazing support as since 2013, the Bikeathon has raised an impressive £75,000 for local charities.
Would you like to join us in taking part this year? It's an easy and fun event for everyone to get involved with. It's not a race but a sponsored fun ride, starting and finishing in Woking Park with two routes available to riders. (The Woking Kids’ Bikeathon will give younger children the chance to be involved by following a short route in the park starting at 11am.) Sponsors Barlow Robbins Solicitors, Bourne Valley Garden Centre, Trident Honda and Woking Shopping have kindly backed the community fundraiser.
If you'd like to take part, head to our website by clicking here for more details and downloads of the entry forms, route map, sponsorship form and flyer. Or if you have questions or queries, contact the Bikeathon team themselves directly.
On top of all the above, our biggest news for April is that we're finally in the month of our first ever charity skydive! In honour of this event, we've got our very own Managing Director Ben to pen a few words about why on EARTH he would willingly jump out of a perfectly good plane.....read on for his slightly nervous sounding thoughts as well as links to the giving pages for all our jumpers!
LinkAble Stories
The countdown is on. In just 29 days time, on Saturday 30th April, a group of 14 of us will be taking part in a 10,000 foot tandem skydive with GoSkydive over Salisbury Plain. Having briefly entertained the idea of asking people to jump out of a plane to raise much needed money for LinkAble and not actually jumping myself, I came to my senses and decided I had to join them and lead the way! I'm delighted to be joined by 13 others though, including some service users, some parents of service users as well as several fellow members of staff and supporters. I'm also particularly inspired to be joined by Jenny, who has been a LinkAble volunteer for several years (many of you will recognise her from the Mayhem cloakroom amongst other events!) as well as playing the vital role of being one of our dedicated Trustees since 2012.
Skydiving has never been something I was desperate to do or had even given a passing thought to, but as they say, "when in Rome" (or should that be Salisbury Plain?) For someone who is fairly petrified of heights this will be an all new challenge. My approach until now has been to pretend it isn’t happening but people keep quoting numbers to me like 10,000 feet (1.8 miles!), 30 seconds of freefall, speeds of up to 125 miles per hour, an almost spotless safety record, which is making this quite hard....the good people at GoSkydive believe that skydiving is more than just jumping out of plane. When I allow myself to think about it I tend to only really focus on the jumping out of the plane bit but I can see that for me and the rest of the team it will be a challenge as well as a great life experience. This doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it though!
However, the reason we are doing this is of course to raise money for LinkAble, money which will provide vital support for our amazing service users. LinkAble is entirely dependent on voluntary donations and fundraising to continue enabling our work. If it wasn’t for our service users, families and supporters putting on events in aid of LinkAble, making generous donations, or individuals challenging themselves to run a marathon or jump out of plane to raise sponsorship, then LinkAble simply wouldn’t be able to provide all the vital services that we do. If that isn't a good enough reason to do something brave, I don't know what is!
I and all the other jumpers would love to ask you to consider supporting our fundraising efforts. Each of us is aiming to raise a minimum of £400 and whether you can give us something which clinks or something which folds, any and everything makes a real difference and will encourage the jumping team. It doesn't have to be yourself either, perhaps you can tell others, ask your friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, even ask your workplace, social club, church or a local business about whether they might join us in sponsoring the skydive?
All donations can be made online, using any of the links below, which is the quickest and most efficient way to give. However, if you'd prefer offline giving, that's fine too, any donations can be sent to the office or just come visit us any day of the week between 9am-5pm or pop something in our collection buckets. A big thank you in advance and we look forward to sharing pictures from the day with you next month!
Skydiving has never been something I was desperate to do or had even given a passing thought to, but as they say, "when in Rome" (or should that be Salisbury Plain?) For someone who is fairly petrified of heights this will be an all new challenge. My approach until now has been to pretend it isn’t happening but people keep quoting numbers to me like 10,000 feet (1.8 miles!), 30 seconds of freefall, speeds of up to 125 miles per hour, an almost spotless safety record, which is making this quite hard....the good people at 
