Newsletter
Issue 1 - Spring 2007
This is our first newsletter - which is intended to keep you up to date with what we have done - and are doing - at BookRelief UK, tell you of our planned events and thank those of you who have assisted us over the past few months.
Our first event was a one-day pre-Christmas Book sale at the Durrant House Hotel in Northam on Sunday 3rd December 20006 which helped us raise a little under £300.00 and for which we thanks those of our members and friends who helped to organise, staff and attend the event, as well as the general manager of the Durrant House Hotel, Julie Finn, and her team, for their very professional support, Ian Starling at Lantern FM, John Harding of Canon UK for publicity material and Sarah Evetts for 'painting' two of our prizes.
We followed up on this with a further pre-Christmas sale when we were kindly offered the use of a vacant shop in Mill Street, Bideford - where we opened our doors on 18th December. Although this was initially a two-week project we were able to extend it until mid-March - which made it not only a great fund-raiser - bringing in some £2,700 - but also an opportunity to make new friends and draw attention to what we are doing at BookRelief. Our grateful thanks for this opportunity goes to John Blackmore and Caroline Hedderly.
We ran a Literary Quiz Night at the River Front Cafe in Barnstaple on February 16th. Unfortunately the winter weather and bouts of flu caused a low turnout. However we must in particular thank the stalwarts from North Devon College library and others who did show up - as well as Bernard Cook for putting together the questions and comparing the evening and Brett of the Fabulous Wine Company, St John's, Barnstaple for supplying the wine for our prizes. We plan to run another quiz night - either in Bideford or Appledore - when the weather is more settled and we can hopefully rely on a better turnout!
Books can be heavy as I'm sure you know - and transporting them in vast numbers to and from various venues can be a pain - both literally and metaphorically! Special thanks here to Mike Green and Alan yeo (Alan wins our informal award for 'donating' the most van miles to carting books on our behalf and earns a well deserved bit of free advertising/publicity for his Home Maintenance Service which covers Repairs, Painting, Carpentry, Decorating and Gardening Work. If you can make use of any of Alan's manifold talents please call him on 01237 476367). Thanks also to David and Sue Rawle, Bernard cook and Brenda Evetts for their help on the transport front.
A mention here also of the support we have received from the Bideford Lions, especially Mike Green and his wife Pamela, both for organising transport and helping to staff the Durrant House book sale. Also Bideford Round Table where we recently addressed one of their regular meetings and have been promised on-going support. Special thanks to Edward Johns for arranging this and Ian McHugh of Atlantic Bathrooms, Bideford for providing a van and manpower at short notice to lift a load of books for us.
As we still do need to shift books by the vanload or carload, especially to our new premises in Barnstaple, we would be pleased to hear from anyone who can help us with this task.
And while we are on the subject of support, many thanks also to all our donors of books (books are, after all, our fundraising 'bread and butter') who have kindly dropped them into us or requested us to collect them - which we will happily try and arrange if the donors live within easy reach of Bideford or Barnstaple.
In order to store, sort, and sell books - particulary online - we have taken a lease on an old carpenter's workshop - located behind a hose at 94 Newport Road, Barnstaple and accessed from a parth running off Rock Avenue. The building has 765 square feet of floor space. We are presently working to obtain grant funding to finance specialised shelving and other fittings and we will need volunteer help with the sorting and online sales - so if this is the sort of part-time activity you enjoy, then please let us know!
We are reminded of the ongoing need for a walk-in shop by many of the customers and friends we acquired during our three months in Mill Street, Bideford and to this end we are looking at options in Bideford and Appledore. We will also need volunteers - full or part-time - to staffit - so please get in touch if you would like to help out!
We are making good progress with our first local projects - to fund and organise within North devon several of the National Literacy Trust's 'Reading is Fundamental' programmes for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds - and we should have more to report on this in our next newsletter.