Fred Foundation

More details to follow

Last month, PHIL PRICE  from P&G Planning cycled 295 miles over 3 days to Paris, had a day off then ran the Paris marathon in 4hrs 13mins raising £800 for the Fred Foundation. 

DUFF BORER ran the London Marathon in a faster time than last year and at the last count had raised £5,224.00  for The Fred!  His Justgiving page is still open for anyone still wishing to donate out there.  So many  people have said that they still want to but haven’t got around to it yet.  Big thanks to all that have donated we are so grateful.

The Fred Foundation are also MEDIA VEST UK’s chosen charity and after holding a very successful ‘Royal Fredding’ charity afternoon  for us   the counting has been done and they’ve raised £772.67!
        Thanks to Duff, Verity, Grace,    Nisha, Sarah, Song, Karolina, Basil, Tom, Jo, Phil and Paul for making it all happen and to everyone who attended and donated.

Also thanks to Jude Brown (as usual) who introduced us to Robert Brooks of BROOKS ESTATE AGENTS SW16 who raised  £118 for us at the Telford Ave/Killisier Ave Royal Wedding street party.  The ‘throwing a wet sponge at an estate agent in the stocks’  stall was a very popular one for some reason…

Also all you local Sth London supporters, please do make sure you fill in the  Nominate Your Favourite Local Charity form available from SAINSBURYS, BALHAM - get all your friends to do it too – we might win if we all get behind it!

http://www.justgiving.com/Duff-Borer2011

Tom Wainwright is only 9, but while his Mum and Dad were away he decided to do a sponsored row for the Fred Foundation. On his brothers rowing machine, he rowed so far -10k- that he got blisters all over his hands. He raised £170 for The Fred Foundation. It was a fantastic achievement and in it’s own way as impressive as running the marathon or swimming the Channel. Well done Tom and many thanks!

Dear Friend,

 Susan Newell has kindly agreed to host another tour of the V &A ceramics department.

 The 2nd phase of the new ceramics galleries opened in May 2010 and contain the majority of the museum’s ceramics collections.  Some of us looked at the carefully interpreted galleries of Phase 1 with Susan on a previous Fred Foundation event.  In phase 2 there are over 26,500 objects displayed with an ‘open storage’ approach and while Susan won’t promise to talk about them all (!) she hopes to give you a whistle-stop tour of the European ceramics in the  beautiful new displays. Susan has been a curator at the Wallace Collection, and worked at the V&A, whilst consulting on ceramics for Sotherby’s.

 Places are very limited so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to attend. The cost will be £20 each. 

 Date Thursday 24th March 10.45

 Felicity Ellacombe

–

www.thefredfoundation.org
thefredfoundation@googlemail.com
0208 675 7691

http://www.justgiving.com/Duff-Borer2011

 Dear Friend,    

 A belated Happy New Year to you all and apologies for sending out the January 2011 newsletter in February!

 The Fred Foundation is entering its 5^th year in a better position than ever. Despite a reduced number of high profile events in 2010 the charity has been quietly busy behind the scenes, with its aim of “helping as many children with autism and their families as possible” increasingly being realised.  

Some of you will know that at the beginning of  last year Fred’s parents moved house in order to get suitable secondary provision for him.  After yet another fight with their new Local Authority, they thankfully won funding for Fred without having to go to a third Tribunal.  They became the first example of the charity giving a child the all important consistency of education provision by providing a funding bridge between the Education Authority’s obligations.

(The Borers still also play an active role fundraising for The Fred!)

Another family we support have also just heard that they won their appeal to get their daughter funded by their Local Authority which is thrilling.  It’s a great example of  how we help families best -  freeing them up to fight their particular Local  Authority by alleviating the worry of having to meet the costs of their child’s specific educational needs.

We are supporting several families at the moment but we can now say we have the potential to support more.  We are working hard to tell all the relevant bodies that we have enough funds to take on new families and on that basis we are actively looking to help autistic children whose parents have lost at Tribunal and are appealing against the decision.    

We get a lot of enquiries and the ones that meet our criteria for funding are so grateful for our help.  I wish I could show you the letters and let you listen to the conversations I have with these parents. They are all at their wits end

thinking nobody can help. You may hear some of their voices on the blog over the next few months. (www.thefredfoundation.org). We also hope they will now in turn hold their own fundraising events to help The Fred Foundation.

As you know, we have always wanted to fund as many children as possible and in 2010 we started to attract donations which were not event related.

In particular, two friends of parents with an autistic child (who were struggling to get a proper provision for him) and intending to set up a charity, admired our work and quickly realised that The Fred Foundation’s aim was the same as theirs.  Their fundraising efforts, which included a very successful dinner over which our Patron Lord Guthrie presided, combined with The Foundation’s ongoing projects, have put the charity in a healthy position for 2011. 

Meanwhile, we are supporting that family and their child whilst their case is being heard in the High Court.

 We have hired an accountancy firm to do our accounts a job previously done by our accountancy trained Trustee Suzanne Thompson. Many thanks to her for all her hard work to date.  (As a matter of course you can see our accounts via the Charity Commission’s web site).

 Of course, the serious business of fundraising continued in 2010 by our regular supporters.

 One amazing piece of fundraising was by Matt Gower who decided to take on the epic challenge of swimming The English Channel.  6 weeks after falling short by 1 mile, Matt got back in the water and after 16 hours battling tides and extreme exhaustion, he made it, raising over £2,000 in the process – a fantastic achievement.

As an easier option Duff Borer ran The London Marathon raising £6,500 along the way.  He is running it again this year, definitely for the last time!

After adopting The Fred Foundation as their corporate charity MediaVest truly threw their weight behind some great initiatives.  A Spring Photography Competition with the winners judged by the photo editor of The National Geographic Magazine raised over £2,000.  Once again they have sent Fred Foundation Christmas cards to all their clients and various members of staff have contributed in their own way including donating monies raised from leaving do’s.

We are indebted as always to Ben and Sandra Reynolds of Reynolds who have once again organised all the catering for our events as well as raising money through money boxes at both their sandwich shops.

 Roberto Mori and family continue to raise money for us whether through money boxes in Roberto’s Gallo Nero delis or the Mori children holding table top sales.

Chris Walmsley, Andrew Brown, Graham Monk, Mark Alhadeff, Deborah Blank, Max Tottenham (and Duff) of the band Telford 6, Richard Haworth and  Martin Galton and Dan Cockerill of Bang Said The Gun held a “Fred Rocks” gig at The Half Moon in Herne Hill in November.  A fantastic night raised over £3,500 and there promises to another gig in November 2011.

 Martin Galton carries on doing all The Fred artwork for our posters and our beautiful invitations.  I am sure you will agree that each one is very special.

 After the success of Susan Newell’s fabulous tour of the V & A last year we hope to add both another tour of the Wallace Collection and possibly the V & A so do watch this space. Thank you so much once again to Susan and to all the people who attended her fabulous event last year.

  Of course, we could not have done any of this without your help.  We are especially grateful for the help we got and carry on getting from our staunch early supporters, whether it be through their ongoing monthly or special on off donations, or their dogged attendance at our events whenever they arise!   You know who you are and we are eternally grateful. 

 Without you there would be no Fred so please give yourselves a slap on the back.  Who would have thought at our inception five years ago we would be able to go on and  help so many families. 

 We are sure Fred would be very proud if he were able to express it.

 Thank you so much.